Registered in the cadastre, never legalised: why Italian cadastral registration is not planning permission

Already have a parcel in mind? The report checks it against public data, with a source and date for every finding. Open the map → €29 in English or Italian · €39 in both languages

The tax agency’s 4 October 2013 press release on the “ghost buildings” programme gives a concrete example of the distinction. It reported 492,000 urban units assigned a provisional taxable value, totalling€288 million. Buildings had been identified by comparing cadastral maps and aerial imagery; the office then assigned values where owners had not declared them. That procedure put buildings into a tax database. It did not issue the municipal permission required to build them.

A tax record and a building permit answer different questions. This guide explains how the two Italian archives that describe a building work, what the "ghost house" programme of 2006–2013 left behind in rural Italy, what the seller’s cadastral conformity statement at the deed does and does not cover, and how to check the planning history before you sign anything. How to legalise works once you find them is covered in our guide to lawful status and the Salva Casa rules. This is practical guidance for buyers, not legal advice.

Two registers, two questions

An Italian building exists in two public records.

The cadastre (catasto), run by the Agenzia delle Entrate, the national tax agency. Its question is: what is there, where, and what notional income (rendita catastale) does it produce for tax purposes? The buildings cadastre (catasto fabbricati, formerly NCEU) holds each unit’s category, class, rendita and floor plan (planimetria). It is updated by the owner, through a surveyor who files a DOCFA declaration for buildings or a Pregeo survey for the land map. Our guide to NCT and NCEU explains the land and building sides.

The municipal building archive (archivio edilizio, often run by the Sportello unico per l’edilizia, SUE). Its question is: was this building built and altered with a permit? This is where the licences, building permits, notices of works (DIA, SCIA, CILA), amnesties (condono), retrospective permits (sanatoria) and approved drawings sit.

When the tax agency receives a DOCFA, it does not check permits. The surveyor declares what exists and the agency assigns a value. A glazed-in terrace built without permission can therefore appear on the cadastral plan, with an updated rendita, while the town hall has no record of it at all. Italian administrative courts repeat the point in case after case: the cadastre is built on the owners' own declarations and serves the tax system.

The one narrow exception

Article 9-bis(1-bis)of Presidential Decree 380/2001 allows original cadastral records, or other evidence such as photographs, maps and archive documents with demonstrated provenance, to help establish lawful status for buildings erected when a permit was not required, together with the later-title sequence specified in the provision. It also covers cases where there is initial evidence of a permit but its copy or details are unavailable. This is a defined evidential route, not a rule that an old floor plan automatically legalises all subsequent alterations. Your surveyor must explain which document establishes which stage of the building’s history.

Ghost houses: found from the air, taxed, not legalised

If you are looking at rural property in Italy, you will meet buildings that are on the cadastre because the state found them from aerial photographs.

Article 2(36) of Decree-Law no. 262 of 2006 started a programme of overlaying the cadastral map on aerial imagery to find land parcels with buildings that had never been declared. Article 19 of Decree-Law no. 78 of 2010 then gave owners a deadline to declare them voluntarily, under the historical regularisation programme. Where owners did nothing, paragraph 10 of article 19 provides that the office attributes a presumed taxable value (rendita presunta), recorded on a provisional basis, at the owner’s expense.

The tax agency’s own press release of 4 October 2013, closing the operation, gives the scale: 2,228,000 parcels identified for investigation, not all requiring registration, and 492,000 urban units given a presumed rendita totalling €288 million, out of €825 million of rendita assigned overall (€537 million of it already definitive).

None of this made those buildings lawful. Commentary at the time put it plainly: registration in the cadastre, voluntary or by the office, does not cure building irregularities, and the building can still be subject to a demolition order. In the hills of Tuscany, Puglia, Calabria or Sicily, a stone barn with a rendita dated 2012 may be exactly that: a structure that the tax office taxes and the planning office has never authorised.

How to spot it in the cadastral search (visura):

• a category and rendita assigned with a date between 2011 and 2013, or notes referring to a presumed rendita;
• a land parcel that became ente urbano (built land) through a cadastral map update (tipo mappale) in the same years;
• a farm building in an agricultural zone with no permit mentioned in the seller’s purchase deed.

None of these proves a violation by itself. Each one means you ask for the municipal file. The historical cadastral search shows the dates and reasons for every change.

When the town hall asks for registration

A second route starts at the municipality. Article 1(336) of Law no. 311 of 2004 allows a municipality that finds a property missing from the cadastre, or registered in a way that no longer matches reality (after an extension, for instance), to serve the owner with a request to file the update within 90 days. If the owner does nothing, the cadastral office does it, at the owner’s expense.

The outcome is a higher rendita and a higher IMU property tax bill. The planning question runs on a separate track, in a different office. A seller who tells you "the comune made us register it, so they know about it" is describing a tax procedure, not a permit.

The DOCFA filing: required even for unlawful works

Many foreign owners ask whether they must declare an unauthorised extension to the cadastre. For cadastral purposes, yes. Article 28 of Royal Decree-Law no. 652 of 1939, as amended by Decree-Law no. 4 of 2006, requires new buildings and changes to be declared within 30 days of the moment they become usable. The penalty for failing to declare, raised by Law no. 311/2004 (to €258–2,066) and quadrupled by Legislative Decree no. 23 of 2011, is €1,032 to €8,264 per unit.

Think about what that means. A register that must record unlawful buildings cannot also certify that the buildings it records are lawful. The duty to declare exists because the tax system taxes what physically stands; legality is someone else’s job.

A worked example for a farmhouse with two undeclared units:

Add the surveyor’s fee and cadastral charges. After paying all of it, the building is in order with the cadastre and, if it had no permit, it still has none.

The seller’s "cadastral conformity" statement, decoded

At the deed (rogito) you will hear the notary read out a statement about conformità catastale. Article 29(1-bis) of Law no. 52 of 1985, added in 2010 by Decree-Law no. 78/2010, requires deeds transferring existing buildings to identify them in the cadastre, refer to the filed floor plans and include the owners' declaration that cadastral data and plans match the actual state of the property, failing which the deed is void. A surveyor’s certificate can replace the owners' statement. Paragraph 1-ter permits a later confirmation in the same form only under its conditions: the omission must not result from missing plans or plans that fail to match reality. It does not provide a general cure for unlawful building work.

The seller is telling you that the cadastre matches the house. The seller is not telling you that the house matches its permits. In practice the pressure to have a "conforming" plan for the deed pushes owners to file a DOCFA shortly before selling. The new plan then shows the attic bathroom or the enclosed porch, while the municipal file has never heard of them. If the documents you receive include a DOCFA filed in the last year or two with a reason such as "internal redistribution" or "extension", that is the first thing your surveyor should compare with the permit drawings.

Building-law declarations require a separate check. Article 46 of Decree 380/2001 governs title statements for the buildings within its scope; the notary identifies the applicable provisions for older buildings. A deed containing the required statements is not a technical comparison of approved drawings and rooms on site. Ask the notary what documentary checks they undertake and appoint a technical professional for the physical and planning comparison. See the notary’s role.

What foreign buyers are usually told, and what to ask

The last row matters more than it looks. In many Italian sales the only surveyor involved has been hired by the seller or the agent to prepare the cadastral plan for the deed. You need your own geometra or architect, instructed in writing to check planning compliance (conformità urbanistica), not only cadastral conformity. For ruins and barns, read our guide to ruderi and restoration rights as well.

How to check, step by step, from abroad

1. Get the cadastral identifiers in writing. Municipality, foglio, particella and, for a building, subalterno. Without them nothing else can be checked.
2. Run the historical cadastral search. The online visura is free on the Agenzia delle Entrate website, including for property you do not own, but logging in requires SPID, CIE or CNS, Italian digital identities that most non-residents do not have. Your surveyor or notary can run it for you. The floor plan itself is only released to the owner or someone holding their delegation.
3. Check the land parcel. If it became ente urbano, note the date of the tipo mappale. A rural building mapped in 2011–2013 is a signal of the ghost-house programme.
4. Read the seller’s purchase deed. Which permits does it cite? If it only says the building was started before 1 September 1967, with a sworn statement, ask what that statement rests on.
5. Request the municipal file. The seller, or your surveyor with the seller’s signed delegation, files an access request (accesso agli atti) with the building archive or the SUE for every permit, variation, notice, amnesty and fitness-for-use certificate (agibilità). Each municipality sets its own form, search fees and response times.
6. Have three documents compared. Approved drawings, cadastral plan, measured survey of the property as built. Your surveyor classifies every difference: within tolerance, regularisable, or unlawful.
7. Write the result into the preliminary contract. Seller’s declaration on lawful status, delivery of the municipal file, a condition that any regularisation is completed before the deed, or a price reduction. Our guide to the preliminary contract shows how such clauses work.

If you will not be in Italy for the deed, you can sign through a power of attorney (procura) signed before a notary in your country; ask the Italian notary in advance which form, legalisation and translation they need. Make sure the person holding it knows that the conditions about the municipal file must be met before they sign on your behalf. If you do not speak Italian, the deed is read with an interpreter; ask for the draft in advance with the planning clauses translated.

Cost and timing

Cadastral searches and maps online cost nothing. The municipality charges its own search and copy fees for the file; ask for the fee table before filing. Your surveyor’s comparison is priced by quote. Most of the delay comes from the archive: for a resale house, allow several weeks in the preliminary contract just to obtain the file.

When legalisation is possible

Whether the extension you found can be legalised depends on how far it departs from the permit and on today’s planning rules. A cadastral entry alone does not settle that answer.

• Partial departures and essential variations (a modest extension, a moved window) may qualify for the retrospective permit of article 36-bis introduced by the 2024 Salva Casa decree, which requires planning compliance at the time of application and building-code compliance at the time of construction.
• Works with no permit or in total departure (a barn built from scratch, a whole house on farmland) fall under article 36, which requires full compliance both then and now, or cannot be legalised at all.
• Works in a protected area need their own assessment. Article 36-bis(4)provides a landscape-compatibility procedure for works within its scope. It is not a universal route for every violation; ask the professional which requirements apply to the particular works and constraint.

A new works notice does not itself settle earlier unlawful work. Before renovation, ask your professional to distinguish existing lawful parts, any statutory tolerances and works needing a separate procedure. The contract should identify what administrative result is required before completion of the purchase.

If the check goes badly

The cadastral plan shows rooms the municipality does not know about. Have your surveyor classify the departure first. If it can be regularised under article 36-bis, get a written estimate (penalty, fees, any adaptation works) and build it into the preliminary contract as a condition or a price reduction. For the SCIA cases covered by article 36-bis(5)(b), the ordinary range is€1,032–10,328. Where the works satisfy both the original and current planning and building rules, the provision instead gives€516–5,164. Your professional must classify the case before estimating the amount.

The building got a presumed rendita and there is no permit. Treat it as unlawful until the seller proves otherwise with documents. A rendita is not proof, and neither is the seller’s word.

There is a demolition order or an open enforcement procedure. Stop. The order follows the property, and as the new owner you would answer for it. Ask the seller for all correspondence with the municipality and take advice from an Italian administrative lawyer before signing anything.

You have already signed the preliminary contract. Reread the seller’s declarations. A false statement about lawful status is a matter for a lawyer; depending on the clauses, it may support termination or a price reduction.

The property is at a court auction. The court expert’s report (perizia) usually lists departures and estimated legalisation costs, and the buyer takes them on.

Check the zone and constraints for your parcel in a TerrenoCheck report, from €29 → · See a sample report

What a TerrenoCheck report shows, and what it does not

The report starts from foglio and particella and shows, for the land under the building, the cadastral data, the planning zone, mapped constraints (landscape, hydrogeological, buffer zones, hazard areas) and the source and date of every map. That tells you whether today’s plan makes a 36-bis legalisation plausible, or whether the building sits where planning compliance will be hard to achieve. The report is in English and Italian if you choose both languages (€39), which helps when you discuss it with an Italian surveyor. It does not check building permits, carry out surveys or give legal advice: comparing the municipal file with the building remains your surveyor’s job.

Check the zone and constraints for your parcel in a TerrenoCheck report, from €29 → · See a sample report