Central Istria
Pazin, Gračišće, Gologorica, Lindar, Pićan. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.
1918–1943 — Records of these years are filed under ITALY, not Croatia — FamilySearch's Italy, Pola and Trieste collection (2152685) holds Croatian parishes. Searching the Croatian collection alone finds nothing.
Whose archive this ground was
| Years | Who held it | Whose archive that means |
|---|---|---|
| 1200–1374 | Aquileia · Gorizia | no registers survive No parish registers exist anywhere for this period. Trent required them only from 1563, and Istria's earliest surviving books are seventeenth-century. |
| 1374–1805 | Habsburg — County of Pazin | Državni arhiv u Pazinu · FamilySearch The books stayed with the parish and were gathered to Pazin in the twentieth century. FamilySearch filmed them as Croatia, Church Books (collection 2040054). |
| 1805–1815 | Napoleonic — Illyrian Provinces | Državni arhiv u Pazinu · FamilySearch The parish books continue unbroken; the regime change is invisible in them. |
| 1815–1918 | Austria–Hungary — Küstenland | Državni arhiv u Pazinu · FamilySearch · ANNO — Austrian Newspapers Online Parish registers to Pazin. The imperial press covering these years is in ANNO, and it names people the registers only number. |
| 1918–1943 | Italy — Provincia dell'Istria | Državni arhiv u Pazinu · FamilySearch THE TRAP. Records of these years are filed under ITALY, not Croatia — FamilySearch's Italy, Pola and Trieste collection (2152685) holds Croatian parishes. Searching the Croatian collection alone finds nothing. |
| 1943–1945 | Adriatisches Küstenland | Državni arhiv u Pazinu · Arolsen Archives Civil registration is patchy. Arolsen holds the deportation and forced-labour records of these years. |
| 1945–1991 | Yugoslavia — SR Croatia | Državni arhiv u Pazinu Registration moves to the matični ured. Anything inside the hundred-year privacy cut-off is not public, whoever holds it. |
| 1991–2026 | Croatia — Istria County | Državni arhiv u Pazinu Current registration is with the matični ured in Pazin. Not public. |
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, 1200–2026, 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.
46 places on this ground
- Pazin 148
- Motovun 122
- Svetvinčenat 115
- Pićan 34
- Gračišće 32
- Čepić 25
- Cerovlje 24
- Gologorica 22
- Ivan (Poreč) 12
- Labin 12
- Roč 12
- Gorica (Pag) 8
- Nedešćina 8
- Martinski 7
- Sovinjak 7
- Kanfanar 6
- Šumber 5
- Brseč 4
- Buzet 4
- Lanišće (Buzet) 4
- Oprtalj 4
- Tinjan 4
- Boljun 3
- Draguč 3
- Kršan 3
- Novaki Motovunski 3
- Selina (Zadar) 3
- Filipana 2
- Kozljak 2
- Marčana 2
- Plomin 2
- Žminj 2
- Zrenj 2
- Grimalda 1
- Karojba 1
- Krbune 1
- Kringa 1
- Krnica 1
- Petar u Šumi 1
- Polje Čepić 1
- Presika (Labin) 1
- Rakalj 1
- Rakotole 1
- Stari Pazin 1
- Vranja 1
- Lindar 0
2 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.
- Croatia, Church Books, 1516-1994 ↗ 1515–1994 7,007,772 records
- Croatia, Delnice Deanery Catholic Church Books, 1571-1926 ↗ 1570–1926 233,088 records