1. What this is
Italy's vehicle ownership register is the PRA (Pubblico Registro Automobilistico), run by ACI, the Italian Automobile Club. It is a public register, so anyone with an interest can obtain a vehicle's records from the plate number alone. You do not need to own the car.
Older records were never fully digitised and exist only in bound paper ledgers (volumi cartacei). ACI will search those ledgers by hand, and there are two possible outputs:
| What you get | Legal value | Cost per plate |
|---|---|---|
| Technical data, every owner the ledger records, and any liens or mortgages | Counts as a certificate | €25.00 |
This document is the estratto cronologico da volume cartaceo. Ask for it by that name.
You will also be offered a €6 visura. Do not take it. It names only the last registered owner and carries no legal value, so for tracing a car's history it tells you almost nothing — and you would have to pay again for the document you actually wanted.
Official ACI page, in Italian: Visura ed estratto cronologico da volume cartaceo.
2. Which vehicles qualify
There is no minimum age. What matters is whether the record sits on paper.
- ACI's own rule of thumb is vehicles first registered up to roughly 1993.
- Typical cases: pre-1993 plates, deregistered vehicles, and vehicles re-registered after a loss of possession.
- Only vehicles that were on the PRA at all. Agricultural vehicles and mopeds were never entered, so there is nothing to search.
If the car is still registered in Italy and has changed hands since the 1990s, part of its history may already be digital. Ask the office to cover both.
3. Reading the plate
Old-system plates carry a province code. Current ones do not.
| Period | What the plate looks like |
|---|---|
| 1905–1927 | A red number standing for the province, then the registration number; no letters |
| 1927–1985 | Two-letter province code plus digits, white on black — MI 123456 |
| 1985–Feb 1994 | Black on white reflective, province code first — GE A12345 |
| From 1994 | AA 000 AA, no province code. These are not paper-volume plates |
Rome is the exception. Its plates spell out Roma in
full, because RO already belonged to Rovigo. In forms and databases
Rome is written RM.
Plate reader
Type a plate and this tells you the province, the period, and whether there is a paper ledger worth asking for.
Plate in the AA 000 AA format? You do not need any of this.
Records from 1994 onward are digital, and ACI sells the chronological extract online
through CRONONET —
no email, no provincial office, no handwriting. It arrives in minutes.
The catch is that signing in needs SPID, the Italian digital identity, which you cannot get without Italian documents. If you are abroad there is a paper form to request the extract instead; the ACI service page has it. Or write to me and I will run it.
Province codes on old-system plates
- AG Agrigento
- AL Alessandria
- AN Ancona
- AO Aosta
- AP Ascoli Piceno
- AQ L'Aquila
- AR Arezzo
- AT Asti
- AV Avellino
- BA Bari
- BG Bergamo
- BL Belluno
- BN Benevento
- BO Bologna
- BR Brindisi
- BS Brescia
- BZ Bolzano
- CA Cagliari
- CB Campobasso
- CE Caserta
- CH Chieti
- CL Caltanissetta
- CN Cuneo
- CO Como
- CR Cremona
- CS Cosenza
- CT Catania
- CZ Catanzaro
- EN Enna
- FE Ferrara
- FG Foggia
- FI Firenze
- FR Frosinone
- GE Genova
- GO Gorizia
- GR Grosseto
- IM Imperia
- IS Isernia
- LE Lecce
- LI Livorno
- LT Latina
- LU Lucca
- MC Macerata
- ME Messina
- MI Milano
- MN Mantova
- MO Modena
- MS Massa-Carrara
- MT Matera
- NA Napoli
- NO Novara
- NU Nuoro
- OR Oristano
- PA Palermo
- PC Piacenza
- PD Padova
- PE Pescara
- PG Perugia
- PI Pisa
- PN Pordenone
- PR Parma
- PT Pistoia
- PV Pavia
- PZ Potenza
- RA Ravenna
- RC Reggio Calabria
- RE Reggio Emilia
- RG Ragusa
- RI Rieti
- RO Rovigo
- SA Salerno
- SI Siena
- SO Sondrio
- SP La Spezia
- SR Siracusa
- SS Sassari
- SV Savona
- TA Taranto
- TE Teramo
- TN Trento
- TO Torino
- TP Trapani
- TR Terni
- TS Trieste
- TV Treviso
- UD Udine
- VA Varese
- VC Vercelli
- VE Venezia
- VI Vicenza
- VR Verona
- VT Viterbo
- Roma Roma (RM)
Codes that changed or disappeared
| Code | Meaning | Note |
|---|---|---|
FO | Forlì | Replaced by FC (Forlì-Cesena) in 1999 |
PS | Pesaro | Replaced by PU (Pesaro e Urbino) in 1999 |
PU | Perugia, 1927–33 | Became PG in 1933. Do not confuse with today's PU |
CU | Cuneo | 1927 only, CN from 1928 |
GI, CG | Girgenti, Castrogiovanni | 1927 only, then AG and EN |
AU | Apuania (Massa-Carrara) | Temporary, 1939–1949 |
FU, FM | Fiume, now Rijeka | FU in 1927, FM from 1930. Today FM means Fermo |
PL, ZA | Pola, Zara | Territories ceded in 1947 |
Codes you will not see on an old plate: BI, KR,
LC, LO, PO, RN, VB,
VV (provinces approved in 1992 that only received codes in early 1994), and
MB, FM-Fermo, BT, SU (from 2006 onward).
A car that moved province usually got a new plate. The estratto shows the chain, so a re-registered car can be traced back to its first registration — but each earlier plate may need its own request, to its own province.
Full list: Sigle automobilistiche italiane (Wikipedia, in Italian).
4. Which office to write to
Requests go to a provincial PRA office (Ufficio Provinciale ACI – PRA). There is one per province.
In theory you should write to the office of your own province of residence — a
rule written with Italian residents in mind. In practice it is simpler and faster to
write directly to the office of the province shown on the plate. A plate
starting MI goes to Milan, one reading Roma to Rome.
Find the address here: Sedi ACI sul territorio – Uffici PRA, then pick the province. Private individuals can write from an ordinary email address.
5. Paying
Pay before you write to the office — the receipt has to be attached to your request.
- Get an Italian tax code. The payment form asks for one. If you do not have one, work it out with the calculator below.
- Open the ACI payment page. No login or registration needed.
- Start a new payment and enter practice code
C00000. - Enter the amount: €25.00, per plate.
- Fill in your details as payer, including the tax code, and pay.
- Save the receipt as a PDF. One payment per plate.
Tax code calculator
For people born outside Italy. Nothing is sent anywhere: the code is worked out in your browser.
6. What to send
Email the office with:
- The payment receipt, as a PDF
- A scan of a valid identity document — a passport is fine
- The plate number, plus chassis number, make and model if you know them
Formatting rules: the subject line must state the type of request, each document is a separate PDF, multi-page documents go in a single file, 2 MB maximum each.
7. What happens next
- You receive a PDF by email: a copy of the ledger pages, often handwritten and always in Italian.
- Official turnaround is 3–5 working days from receipt of the request.
Reading the result
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| intestatario | Registered owner |
| trascrizione | Recorded transfer |
| ipoteca | Mortgage or lien |
| radiazione | Deregistration — per esportazione means exported, per demolizione means scrapped |
8. The email to send
Write to the office in Italian. Copy this as it stands and replace the four highlighted parts — everything else can be sent unchanged.
What to put in the highlighted parts
| In the template | Replace with |
|---|---|
MI 123456 | The plate, exactly as it appears. Both times it occurs. |
marca, modello, telaio se noto | Make, model and chassis number — delete whatever you do not know. |
25,00 | Leave it as it is, unless the fee has changed. Italian decimals use a comma. |
Nome, indirizzo, telefono | Your name, postal address and phone number. |
What the email says
So you know what you are sending:
| Italian | English |
|---|---|
| Oggetto: Richiesta estratto cronologico da volume cartaceo – targa | Subject line. Ends with the plate. |
| chiedo l'estratto cronologico da volume cartaceo del veicolo targato | I request the chronological extract from the paper ledger for the vehicle with plate… |
| Allego la ricevuta del pagamento pagoPA di € | I attach the payment receipt for the amount of… |
| e copia del mio passaporto. | and a copy of my passport. |
| Vi prego di inviare il documento in PDF a questo indirizzo. | Please send the document as a PDF to this address. |
| Grazie, cordiali saluti | Thank you, kind regards |
9. If you would rather not do it yourself
I research Italian vehicle provenance, and I am happy to run the request for you. Write to aa@andreaantonacci.com with the plate and whatever else you know about the car.