Visura Catastale and Atto di Provenienza: Read Them Before You Sign

The visura says the flat is category A/2 with a rendita of 1,240 euros. It does not say who owns it.

The visura catastale is the extract from the cadastre run by the Agenzia delle Entrate, Italy's revenue agency: municipality, sheet, parcel and subaltern, category, class, consistency, rendita catastale, address and registered holders. Since 2010 every deed transferring a building must carry the cadastral data, the plan reference and a declaration that both match reality, under decree-law 78/2010.

What is in a visura catastale?

Four blocks, according to the Agenzia delle Entrate's guide to reading a visura. The identifying data: comune catastale, foglio, particella and, for a unit inside a building, the subalterno. The classification data: categoria, classe, consistenza and rendita, the cadastral income obtained by multiplying the consistency by the unit tariff for the municipality, zone, category and class. The intestatari, the holders recorded in the cadastre. And the address, down to staircase, floor and unit.

What it is not is proof of ownership. The cadastre is a fiscal inventory; the agency's own service directs anyone who needs to verify title to the registri immobiliari, the property registers kept by the Conservatoria, which are consulted through a separate ispezione ipotecaria.

Why does the deed need a conformity declaration?

A 2010 law made it a condition of validity. Article 19, paragraph 14, of decree-law 78/2010 added a paragraph 1-bis to article 29 of law 52/1985: public deeds and authenticated private deeds that transfer, create or dissolve rights over existing buildings must contain, for urban units and on pain of nullity, the cadastral identification, the reference to the floor plans filed in the cadastre, and a declaration by the holders that the cadastral data and the plans conform to the actual state of the property. A qualified technician's certificate may replace the declaration. Before the deed, the notary must identify the cadastral holders and check them against the property registers.

For a buyer this is the clause that turns a mismatch into a problem before it becomes a purchase. A wall moved without a filed plan, a terrace enclosed, a cellar merged into the flat: each is a planimetria that no longer matches, and the deed cannot be signed until it does.

Where do mortgages and seizures appear?

Not in the visura catastale. The Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato, the national notaries' council, lists among the notary's functions the verification of ipoteche, pignoramenti and prelazioni, that is mortgages, seizures and pre-emption rights, and those checks run on the registri immobiliari, not on the cadastre. The agency's online service offers the ispezione ipotecaria alongside the visura for a property's owner, and it is the document to ask for when the question is debt rather than description.

What is the atto di provenienza?

The seller's own title deed. It is the act by which the current owner acquired the property, a purchase, a donation, an inheritance, and it is the document the notary starts from to reconstruct the chain of transfers in the property registers. The cadastre's intestatari and the registers' owners are supposed to coincide; the 2010 rule quoted above requires the notary to check that they do.

How do you get the visura, and what does it cost?

Free, online, from the agency. The Agenzia delle Entrate states that an owner can obtain current and historical visure, floor plans and ispezioni ipotecarie free of charge as PDF files through its online services with SPID, CIE or CNS credentials, and that anyone can request visure for properties they do not own through the free service for third-party properties, while floor plans stay restricted to the owner.

We do not give buying advice. What the agency's pages and the 2010 law support is this: the visura describes and taxes the flat but does not prove who owns it, the deed cannot be signed until the cadastral data and plans match reality, and mortgages live in a different register that the notary must check. AiMYNDi reads the visura, the planimetria and the listing together and flags the mismatches in your language. An example of what a report looks like shows the legal section, and buying in Italy as a German buyer walks through the rest of the process.