Record Atlas
6 eras · 1565–2026 · 8 places

South Tyrol (Alto Adige) — Habsburg Tyrol until 1919

Bolzano, Merano, Bressanone, Brunico, Vipiteno, Silandro. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1565–1805 County of Tyrol with the prince-bishoprics of Brixen and Trent GenTeam.at · FamilySearch

Much of the land was held by the prince-bishops of Trent and Brixen. The earliest surviving Catholic parish register of the diocese of Bozen-Brixen, from Stilfes, begins in 1565.
1805–1814 Split between Bavaria and the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy FamilySearch

Austria ceded northern Tyrol to Bavaria after Napoleon's victory in 1805, and the Kingdom of Italy took southern Tyrol in 1810. The Congress of Vienna returned the whole of Tyrol to Austria.
1814–1918 Austrian Tyrol — from 1867 a crown land of Cisleithania GenTeam.at · ANNO — Austrian Newspapers Online · FamilySearch

About 89 percent of the population spoke German in the 1910 census. The Catholic parish registers served as the official civil registers until the end of 1923.
1918–1943 Kingdom of Italy — province of Bolzano Archivio di Stato di Bolzano · FamilySearch

Italy occupied the area in November 1918 and the Treaty of Saint-Germain gave it the territory south of the Alpine watershed; the annexation is dated 1919 or October 1920 depending on the source, and the present province was formed in 1926. Italian state civil registers replaced the parish registers on 1 January 1924, and the 1939 Option Agreement let German speakers emigrate to Germany or stay.
1943–1945 German occupation — de facto annexed to Greater Germany FamilySearch

After Italy's surrender in 1943 German forces occupied the region.
1945–2026 Italy — autonomous province of Bolzano/Bozen Archivio di Stato di Bolzano · FamilySearch

The Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement of September 1946 created the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and the autonomy statute followed in 1972. The South Tyrol Provincial Archive has placed the Catholic parish registers of the diocese of Bozen-Brixen online, covering the beginnings to 31 December 1923.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1565–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

8 places on this ground

258 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

…and 198 more.

All record regions · The map