Your Italian Ancestors Aren't Online.
I am Marina Martello, professional genealogist and President of Progenita. Every case is mine alone: my eyes in the reading rooms, my transcriptions line by line, my signature on the final family report.
Parish registers, civil archives, and military rolls — researched on site and delivered as a professional family history for the Italian diaspora in the Americas.
How Your Research Unfolds
Home ground: Trentino, Veneto, the Mantua area, the province of Pordenone and Friuli: the archives I know shelf by shelf, the parishes where I am a familiar face.
Wherever the trail leads: When a family line crosses regional borders, I travel with it: recent fieldwork has taken me to Umbria and beyond, anywhere in Italy your ancestors' story requires[cite: 12].
Every region, online: Civil, parish and military records across all of Italy, through Portale Antenati, FamilySearch, Ancestry and MyHeritage.
START YOUR RESEARCH →
Discover your Italian heritage
Ever wondered where your Italian story begins?[cite: 13] My research starts where your family left off: parish registers, civil archives, military rolls and notarial acts, read page by page in the reading rooms across Italy. Every claim in my reports is tied to an original record transcribed, translated and documented with archival references you can verify. From the first surname hint to the final sourced family line, I build your ancestry on evidence, not on family legend. Ready to walk in your ancestors' footsteps? START YOUR RESEARCH →Choose Your Starting Point
Wherever you are in your research journey, there's a clear next step.
I Only Have a Surname
Explore the historical distribution of your Italian surname: over 70,000 names verified directly in the archives, not just scraped from the web.
- Region and province distribution
- Surname meaning from the library's shelves
- Verified and index layers, never mixed
Free, no signup — the map answers in seconds.
Know the region already? Open the dioceses guide →All twenty regions, cabinet by cabinet, with verified archive addresses.
I Hit a Brick Wall Online
Most Italian records aren't digitized. On-site research breaks through where the digital databases stop — and these are the doors it opened:
- Veneto: a marriage that was four births
- Friuli: margins no database links
- Umbria: one family, four spellings
Read how the paper beats the portal.
Or sit at the free benches first →The military bench reads the wrong flag; the decoder reads the zero share.
I'm Ready to Find My Roots
Send me what you already hold — even a single certificate. Within three working days you receive a one-page written pre-analysis of your research.
- Certificates and civil records
- Parish letters and family notes
- Screenshots, manifests, naturalization papers
No calls, no obligation — a written assessment you can keep.
Your Family Is Still in the Records
