Building permit in Italy: how the permesso di costruire works

A building permit in Italy is the written authorisation, issued by the municipality, that allows an important building transformation to begin: a new house, a demolition and reconstruction that changes the volume, a renovation that produces a building different from the one before. In Italian it is called the permesso di costruire. Without it the works cannot start, and a site opened before the permit is issued exposes the owner to penalties and, in the most serious cases, to demolition orders.

This guide explains when a building permit in Italy is needed, who applies for it, which documents go with the application, how long the procedure takes, what happens if the municipality stays silent and how long the permit remains valid once issued. It is written by Federico Cappellina Architects, an architecture practice in Verona that designs houses in north-east Italy and Lombardy and follows their construction. It is addressed to foreign owners, buyers and advisers who are building, renovating or buying in Italy and need to understand how the Italian system works. The laws are quoted and linked to Normattiva, the official database of Italian legislation, so that you can read the current text; this page is not legal advice, and regional rules and municipal regulations can differ.

Building permit in Italy in brief

A building permit in Italy is issued by the municipality (Comune) under the national building code, D.P.R. 380/2001, for new buildings and for the heavier kinds of renovation.
It is granted to the owner or to whoever has a right to ask for it, it travels with the property if the property is sold, and it cannot be revoked once issued.
The application goes to the municipality’s one-stop building office, normally online, with a qualified professional’s sworn declaration that the design complies with the rules.
The statutory deadlines are 60 days for the preliminary review and 30 days for the decision, with pauses for missing documents; real times depend on the municipality and on how complete the file is.
If the deadline passes without a reasoned refusal, silent approval can arise, but not where environmental, landscape, cultural or hydrogeological constraints apply.
A building permit in Italy has a limited life: works must start within one year and finish within three years of starting, unless a reasoned extension is granted.

Building permit in Italy for a single-storey villa: CD Home in Verona, glazed façade at dusk, a project by the studio — CD Home, Verona: a single-storey villa designed by the studio, shown as a reference of language, not an example of a particular permit procedure.

What a building permit in Italy is

The building permit is governed by the Italian building code, the Testo unico dell’edilizia, D.P.R. 380/2001. Under Article 11 a building permit in Italy is issued to the owner of the property or to a person who has a title to apply. Four characteristics are worth knowing before you start:

It is transferable with the property. If the land is sold, the building permit in Italy passes to the person who takes over. For an international buyer this matters: a plot sold with a valid permit carries that permit with it, within the limits of its time validity.
It does not affect ownership or the other rights attached to what is built. It is an administrative authorisation, not a document of title.
It cannot be revoked: once a building permit in Italy has been issued, that gives the owner a degree of certainty when planning the works.
It is onerous. It carries the payment of a building contribution under Article 16, which we describe below.

The grant of a building permit in Italy also does not prejudice the rights of third parties. A neighbour who believes a distance has been breached can still assert that right, even though the municipality has issued the permit. The municipality verifies compliance with planning rules; it does not settle private disputes.

When a building permit in Italy is required

Article 10 lists the urban and building transformations that require a building permit in Italy. For someone designing a house, the categories are these:

New construction: a house on an empty plot, or an extension that goes beyond the limits set by the legal definitions.
Urban restructuring: works that replace one urban fabric with another, even changing plots, blocks and road layout.
Certain building renovations: those that lead to a building wholly or partly different from the previous one, with changes of volume, outline (sagoma) or façades in the cases the article indicates, and some demolitions and reconstructions of protected buildings or in restricted areas, under specific conditions.

To understand which category a project falls into, one starts from the definitions in Article 3: ordinary and major maintenance, restoration and conservative refurbishment, building renovation, new construction and urban restructuring. Those national definitions prevail over municipal planning rules and building regulations. At the same time, regional law may identify other works that need a building permit in Italy and may regulate changes of use. This is why the same project can need a different title in Veneto, in Lombardy or in another region, and why the check must always be made on the municipality where you intend to build.

If you already own a building and are weighing demolition against renovation, our guide to demolishing and rebuilding a house in Italy sets out the comparison. If you have not yet bought the land, read buying land in Italy first: the building potential of a plot is a question for the planning rules, not for the sales brochure.

Building permit in Italy or SCIA: choosing the right title

For some works the law allows a choice. Article 23 admits the SCIA (segnalazione certificata di inizio attività, a certified notice of commencement of works) as an alternative to the building permit for the building renovations of Article 10 and for new constructions governed by implementation plans or by general plans with precise volumetric provisions. In those cases the building contribution is still payable, and the SCIA must be filed at least thirty days before work begins, with a detailed report signed by a qualified designer.

The opposite route is provided by Article 22, paragraph 7: whoever could proceed with a SCIA may still apply for a building permit in Italy, without paying the building contribution. The choice between the two titles is not merely administrative. It changes the moment at which works may begin, the degree of prior control exercised by the municipality and the consequences of any error. The full comparison, including the lighter CILA and works that need no title at all, is in our guide to CILA and SCIA renovation permits in Italy.

Who applies for a building permit in Italy, and where

The application for a building permit in Italy is submitted to the one-stop building office (sportello unico per l’edilizia) of the municipality where the work will be carried out, generally through an online portal. The owner, or whoever has a title to apply, signs it, but the technical part belongs to the designer. The building code requires a declaration by a qualified professional certifying that the design complies with the planning instruments, the building regulations and the safety, health and energy rules.

False declarations are punished with imprisonment from one to three years, and the administration informs the professional’s order (Article 20, paragraph 13). That is the reason a serious designer does not sign what has not been checked. For a foreign client managing the project at a distance, it is also a useful guarantee: the person who signs the declaration answers personally for it. Our guide to the questions to ask an architect explains how to check who will carry that responsibility.

Documents for a building permit in Italy

Article 20, paragraph 1 lists three elements: the documents proving the applicant’s title, the design, and the designer’s declaration. In practice each municipality publishes a list of the drawings and reports for a building permit in Italy that varies from place to place. For a new house it usually includes:

the cadastral map extract and the urban planning certificate, or the cadastral and planning data of the plot;
the survey of the existing state, with ground levels, boundaries and trees of value;
plans, elevations and sections of the design, with the calculation of areas and volumes and the check of heights and distances;
the design report and photographic documentation;
the specialist reports required by regulation, for example on energy performance, services, acoustics and seismic risk, with the filing of structural works where required;
the authorisations for any constraint on the plot, starting with the landscape authorisation;
the data for calculating the building contribution.

If you want to understand what the urban planning certificate says and how to read it, see our guide to the urban planning certificate in Italy. An orderly file makes a real difference. An incomplete application is not rejected, but it stops the clock of the procedure, as we show next.

The building permit in Italy procedure, step by step

Article 20 sets the deadlines in days. They are maximum terms: in practice the clarity of the application and the relationship with the municipal technical office count for more than any single date.

Responsible officer. The one-stop office tells the applicant who the responsible officer is within ten days of filing. Applications are examined in chronological order.
Review. The officer has sixty days to assess the application and propose a decision. If other opinions or consents are needed, the rules of Articles 14 onwards of Law 241/1990 on the services conference apply.
Missing documents. Within thirty days of filing, the officer may ask, once only, for additional documents. From receipt of the documents the term starts running again.
Modest changes. During the sixty days of review the officer may ask the applicant to adapt the design. If the applicant agrees, there are fifteen days to supply the documents, and the term remains suspended.
Decision. Within thirty days of the proposal, the head of the office or the responsible officer adopts the decision. The term rises to forty days if a notice of intended refusal was sent beforehand (Article 10-bis of Law 241/1990).
Complex projects. The sixty-day and thirty-day terms may be doubled by a reasoned decision.
Publicity. The permit is published on the municipal notice board (albo pretorio) and its details must be displayed on the site.

The sum of the terms is long, but it does not coincide with the real duration of a building permit in Italy: the same rule provides for suspensions, and municipalities have different workloads. For a reliable indication of timing in a specific municipality, ask the one-stop office and the designer who deals with it regularly. If anyone promises an exact date before the application has been filed, treat the promise with caution.

Silent approval and a building permit in Italy: the limits

If the deadline passes without a reasoned refusal, a building permit in Italy can arise by operation of law through silent approval (silenzio-assenso, Article 20, paragraph 8). It is not a reliable shortcut in every case. Where environmental, landscape, cultural or hydrogeological constraints weigh on the property, the rules of Articles 14 onwards of Law 241/1990 apply, unless the necessary consents have already been obtained and are still valid. Even when silent approval arises, the applicant can ask the administration for a certificate that the terms have expired, which must be issued within fifteen days.

Our practice is never to open a site relying on silence alone. We ask for the certificate and keep it in the site file, because it will be useful for the certificate of habitability, for a sale and for any later inspection.

Building permit in Italy and the design: CD Home in Verona, a single-storey villa on a lawn, a project by the studio — CD Home, Verona: heights and distances are verified before the elevations are drawn. A reference of language, not an example of a permit file.

Constraints: the landscape authorisation comes first

If the plot is protected, for example because it lies within 300 metres of a lake, the landscape authorisation is a separate act from the building permit and precedes it. Works cannot begin until both have been obtained. The rules, the deadlines and the cases of exemption are set out in our Italian guide on the landscape constraint. Other constraints, such as hydrogeological, seismic or road-protection rules, add to it and should be identified before the land is bought, not after.

Another precondition is in Article 12. The building permit in Italy is issued in compliance with the planning instruments and regulations in force, and only if the primary urbanisation works exist, or the municipality plans to build them within three years, or the applicant undertakes to build them together with the project. If the application conflicts with a planning instrument that has been adopted but not yet approved, safeguard measures apply and the decision is suspended for the period the law indicates. For a buyer, the practical lesson is simple: ask whether the plot is serviced and whether any planning change is under way before signing.

What a building permit in Italy costs

The cost is not a single amount. It is made up of three different items, and it helps to separate them before drawing up a budget.

The building contribution

Article 16 provides that a building permit in Italy carries a contribution proportionate to the incidence of the urbanisation charges and to the cost of construction. The urbanisation charges (oneri di urbanizzazione) are primary (roads, parking, sewers, water and energy networks, lighting, equipped green areas) and secondary (schools, nurseries, markets, sports facilities, health facilities). The municipality sets their incidence by resolution on the basis of regional tables. The cost of construction is determined by the regions; for existing buildings it is calculated on the cost of the works and, for building renovation, the municipality may provide values lower than those for new construction.

The urbanisation charges are paid when the permit is issued and, on request, may be paid in instalments. The share on the cost of construction is determined at issue but paid during the works, within sixty days of their completion. Whoever undertakes to build urbanisation works directly may ask for a total or partial offset (scomputo). The amounts depend on the municipality and on the project: they come from the one-stop office’s calculation and should not be estimated from memory or from a figure heard for another town.

Fees and taxes

Applications also carry secretariat fees and revenue stamps, set locally. They have to be requested from the office.

The professional’s fee

Design, building application and site supervision are professional services agreed in a written engagement letter. How the fee is calculated, with examples, is in our guide to architect fees for a villa in Italy. For the wider budget of a project, see the cost of renovating a house in Italy.

How long a building permit in Italy remains valid

A building permit in Italy that has been issued is not a title without an expiry date. Article 15 requires that works begin within one year of issue and be completed within three years of their start, except for reasoned extensions for supervening events or for the sheer size of the work. If the deadlines are not met, the permit lapses for the part not carried out, and a new application is needed to complete it. It is one more reason to open the site only when the contractor, the construction design and the financing are ready, and not on the day after the permit is issued.

After the building permit in Italy: from the site board to habitability

The issue of a building permit in Italy opens the construction phase. In general, in order:

Construction design and tender. The building permit approves the building design, not the construction details. With the construction design one prepares the specification and asks contractors for quotations. Our guides to the construction specification (capitolato) and to the bill of quantities explain how the offers are made comparable.
Notice of start of works, with the name of the contractor, the safety documentation required by law and the site board bearing the details of the permit.
Site supervision. The site manager (direttore dei lavori) checks that the work is carried out according to the design and the permit and records the site visits.
Variations. Changes during construction have their own rules and should not be improvised. A site that departs from the design without the correct title is the origin of the most frequent problems when a house is sold.
Completion and habitability. At the end, the notice of completion of works is filed together with the certified notice for habitability under Article 24. The documents and the timing are in our guide to the certificate of habitability in Italy.

The whole path, from the first sketch to handover, is described in our guide to the house design process in Italy.

Managing a building permit in Italy from abroad

Many of the owners we work with live elsewhere. A few practical points are worth settling at the outset. Agree in writing the language of the drawings, the reports and the site records. Ask who will deal with the municipality and the one-stop office, and who can sign on your behalf if you cannot attend an appointment. Ask how often you will receive a written progress report with photographs, and where the permit, the stamped drawings and the certificate of expiry of the terms will be kept. None of this is a legal requirement; it is the discipline that keeps a project under control when the owner is not on site.

It also helps to know that the procedure for a building permit in Italy rests on two ideas that may be unfamiliar. The first is that the decision belongs to the municipality, which applies national rules, regional law and its own planning instruments together. The second is that the qualified professional’s declaration carries real weight and real responsibility, as the criminal penalty for false declarations shows. If you know the planning or building-control systems of other countries, expect the vocabulary not to map one to one: a document with a similar name abroad may have a different legal effect in Italy, and the reverse. This is a general caution, not a comparison of specific rules.

The mistakes we meet most often

Buying the land without checking the building title. A presumed building capacity is not a permit. Before the preliminary contract, the technical rules of the plan are read and a preliminary opinion is requested.
Confusing the outline design with the design to be filed. The first is a proposal; the second must be complete and coordinated with the specialist reports.
Starting works while waiting for the permit. This is the case with the most serious consequences, because regularisation after the event is not always possible.
Overlooking constraints. A missing landscape authorisation or other consent makes the whole route ineffective.
Letting the deadlines lapse. The permit lapses after one year without a start of works, and the owner must begin again.

If a project has already departed from its permit, or an old building has works that were never declared, the route is different and is explained in our guide to regularising building works in Italy. For the margins of error that the law tolerates in the construction of a building, see construction tolerances in Italy.

How we work

As a practice we follow the project from the plot to handover, so for us the application for a building permit in Italy is not a formality downstream but a part of the design. Before drawing the elevations we check the planning indices, the heights, the distances and the constraints on the plot; only then do we draw. Anyone who wants to know whether a plot or a building allows what they have in mind can write to the practice from the contact page. To choose the professional to whom to entrust the engagement, whichever practice it is, we have set out the criteria in the guide on the questions to ask an architect.

Building permit in Italy and the project: AV Home in Dueville, stacked white volumes and pool at dusk, a project by the studio — AV Home, Dueville (Vicenza): a house composed around its plot. A reference of language, not an example of a building permit procedure.

The building permit in Italy in a few lines

To sum up: a building permit in Italy is the municipality’s authorisation for new houses and for the heavier renovations; it is requested through the one-stop office with the designer’s sworn declaration; the review takes sixty days and the decision thirty, with pauses for documents; silent approval does not replace the landscape authorisation or other consents; and the building permit in Italy is valid for one year to start and three years to complete. Everything else in this page is detail on how to prepare for those steps.

Italian terms at a glance

Permesso di costruire: the building permit; the authorisation issued by the municipality for new construction and heavier renovations.
Comune: the municipality, which holds the planning powers and issues the permit.
Sportello unico per l’edilizia: the one-stop building office of the municipality, to which applications are submitted.
SCIA (segnalazione certificata di inizio attività): the certified notice of commencement of works, a lighter title that in some cases replaces the permit.
Oneri di urbanizzazione: the urbanisation charges, primary and secondary, paid with the building contribution.
Silenzio-assenso: silent approval, which can arise when the municipality does not decide within the deadline, subject to the exceptions described above.
Direttore dei lavori: the site manager, who checks that the works follow the design and the permit.
Agibilità: the habitability certificate that follows completion of the works.

Building permit in Italy: frequently asked questions

When is a building permit in Italy required?

For new constructions, urban restructuring and the building renovations that lead to a building different from the previous one, with changes of volume, outline or façades, and in the other cases of Article 10 of D.P.R. 380/2001. Regional law may add other works. The check is made on the project and on the municipality.

Who can apply for a building permit in Italy?

The owner of the property or whoever has a title to apply (Article 11). The permit is transferable with the property and cannot be revoked once issued.

How long does a building permit in Italy take?

The law sets sixty days for the review and thirty for the decision (forty with a notice of intended refusal), which can be doubled for complex projects, with suspensions for additional documents. Real times depend on the municipality and on how complete the application is.

What happens if the municipality does not reply to a building permit application?

Silent approval arises, except where environmental, landscape, cultural or hydrogeological constraints apply: in that case the rules of Law 241/1990 on the services conference govern. The applicant can request a certificate that the deadlines have expired, to be issued within fifteen days.

How much does a building permit in Italy cost?

It carries the building contribution (urbanisation charges and cost of construction), calculated by the municipality, plus secretariat fees and the professional’s fee. The amount is not the same in every municipality and has to be calculated on the project.

How long is a building permit in Italy valid?

Works must begin within one year of issue and be completed within three years of their start, unless a reasoned extension is granted. Once the deadlines pass, the permit lapses for the part not carried out.

Can a SCIA replace a building permit in Italy?

For some works, yes (Article 23): the building renovations of Article 10 and the new constructions governed by implementation plans with precise volumetric provisions. The building contribution remains payable. The comparison is in our guide to CILA and SCIA.