Landing in Italy

A 16-character string of letters and digits — your identity key in Italy. Phone contract, bank account, rental contract, health registration, tuition: every one of them asks for it before anything else. It is free, and you walk out with the paper version the same day.

The visa only gets you across the border; the permesso di soggiorno is what lets you stay legally. Non-EU students have to hand in the “yellow kit” — the kit giallo — at a post office within 8 working days of entering the country. Miss that deadline and it counts against your renewal, or you can be asked to leave.

You cannot get the visa without health cover. Once you are here you can enrol voluntarily in the SSN, Italy’s national health service: you get a tessera sanitaria, a family doctor (medico di base), and care that is essentially free. Students have a rate of their own.

Without an Italian number you cannot open a bank account, couriers cannot reach you and landlords cannot call you back. Prepaid — ricaricabile — is the simplest: €7–10 a month, with more data than you will get through.

Rent goes out by transfer, the scholarship comes in, tuition has to be paid — all of it needs an IBAN. Digital banks open in minutes; a traditional Italian bank is easier for landlords and universities to accept. Plenty of students keep both.

An Italian rental contract has to be registered with the Agenzia delle Entrate — the registrazione. An unregistered one has no standing in law. Only a registered contract will do for your permesso di soggiorno, your residenza, or a student aid application.

Registering your habitual address with the comune. With residenza you can get an Italian ID card, apply for ISEE-based student aid, claim the discounted transit pass, and move your medico di base to this city.

In Milan one card covers the metro, the buses and the trams. There is a separate annual price for the under-27s, and the ISEE can bring it down further. It works out at less than half what single tickets cost.

Tuition at an Italian state university is banded by household means, and which band you land in depends on your ISEE. International students need the ISEE parificato, the version that accounts for income earned abroad. Starting early can save you a four-figure sum in euros.