Step-by-step guides, and stories from people who have already been through it.
48 items
If you are not an Italian citizen, your tessera sanitaria (health card) lasts as long as your residence permit. Once you renew the permit, the new card is not sent automatically: you have to go back to the ASL and renew your registration. Here is how, and what to do if you lost the card.
Checked on 11 Sep 2026
Public offices cannot ask you for certificates you can replace with your own signed declaration: that has been the law since 2000. If you are not an Italian citizen there is one precise limit, and knowing where it lies saves you wasted trips.
Checked on 11 Sep 2026
With the post office receipt alone you can travel and return. But on three precise conditions, and one of them is about the stopovers on your flight to Manila.
Checked on 12 Sep 2026
Before you sign up for an exam, check your residence permit: if you hold the EU long-term residence permit, by law you do not have to prove B1 at all. And if you do have to, the A2 certificate you used for your permit does not count.
Checked on 10 Sep 2026
Sleeping where you work does not mean being available twenty-four hours a day. The contract sets a daily maximum, eleven hours of rest, a two-hour break during which you may leave the house, and a Sunday nobody can take away.
Checked on 9 Sep 2026
The minimum rates for domestic work changed on 1 January 2026. Here they all are, level by level: monthly for live-in workers, hourly for the others, plus food, lodging and the allowances that are added on top.
Checked on 9 Sep 2026
The level written on your payslip decides what you are owed. There are four, each with a «super» version: here are the jobs in each, and the two words — self-sufficient and trained — that are worth almost three hundred euros a month.
Checked on 9 Sep 2026
If you work under a regular contract, registering with the SSN costs nothing and covers your dependent family members too. The € 2,000 a year contribution people talk about applies only to those who fall outside those cases.
Checked on 9 Sep 2026
It is not a second-class account and it is your right: banks and Poste must offer it to anyone entitled to stay in Italy, including asylum seekers and people with no fixed address. With an ISEE below € 11,600 it costs nothing.
Checked on 9 Sep 2026
There is an official, free website listing every electricity and gas offer — not only those from companies that pay to be found. It is called Portale Offerte, run by Acquirente Unico for the energy regulator.
Checked on 9 Sep 2026
After five years of lawful residence you can apply for the permit with no expiry date: no more renewals every two years, no more waiting. It requires an income equal to the social allowance and the A2 Italian test.
Checked on 9 Sep 2026
Ten years of legal residence for people from outside the EU, a minimum income over the last three years, Italian at level B1, a € 250 fee. And how to check for yourself the one thing that stops most applications: unbroken residence.
Checked on 9 Sep 2026
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