You don’t need to check in with any authorities unless you happen to arrive somehow (how?) without going through Immigration and Customs control points. With a valid Canadian passport, your “visa” is the stamp that Immigration puts in your passport when you present it at your arrival airport to enter the country.

I’ll be arriving by car from France and leaving by car to France, so I wouldn’t pass through any border crossings. Sorry – I should have been more clear.

France and Italy and most countries in mainland Europe share a common border zone. Since you will have arrived to the Schengen Agreement border zone (of which France is also a member) no additional passport checks or visas/stamps are needed for overland travel. Think of it as driving from Alberta to British Columbia… there’s no police at the border checking IDs. You shouldn’t have any problems.

Embassies sometimes recommend, as a courtesy, that you register during your visit, but in developed and safe countries, this really isn’t necessary.

See also http://en.wikipedia….

Don, that’s not so simple. There is indeed an official rule in Italy about checking in and getting a permit. If I remember correctly one has to do that if one goes to Italy for more then 5 working days or something like that. Moreover, last summer I’ve dealt with an international organization in Trieste that made sure its visitors comply with this rule. (I have even seen an actual permit, not mine though.)

On the other hand, if I, like OP, would drive in and out without staying anywhere for more then 3 days, I would just ignore this thing since:
(1) there would be no way for the authorities to know I was there; and
(2) they would not care anyway.

i think that’s the permesso di siggiorno http://www.expatsinitaly.com/arrival/permesso.html
 
on another note, what i would like to know is, why if there are supposed to be no passport checks between schengen countries, was i frequently asked for my passport while travelling by train from one schengen country to another (austria to germany, austria to italy, etc)? if i had been travelling by car would it have been different?

Very interesting. I thought OP must have been confused about border control issues. Please tell me this (seemingly) unecessary beauracracy is not indicative of the way things are done in Italy….

I may be confusing concepts, but when you go to an Italian hotel, they take your passport and copy down details, which they are required to submit to the police. So this requirement is met, for most tourists to Italy, by the hotel fulfilling its obligation.
 
So if you are driving through Italy, and staying at any sort of paid establishment, my understanding is that this requirement will be met almost automatically.

Well, another thing I’ve learned while in Trieste. The hotel clerk told me that by law she must record my passport data every time I use the hotel computer. The same law, apparently, says that they’d need my full-body x-ray to let me use their own wi-fi. I see no other reason why also, by law, she could not tell me the password. The same law, of course could not stop me from piggy-backing on the networks of law abiding but not very computer savvy citizens.

Certainly. The hotel fulfills its obligation to register everybody who stays for any length of time. It does not fulfill traveler’s obligation to fill-in an application form, pay some kind of fee and submit two passport-style photographs all the while knowing that by the time permit is ready (about a month) (s)he will probably be long gone. All that BS.

This was my understanding, as well.

Don’t they officially register your passport at the hotel desk in Italy — like they do in parts of the “former eastern bloc”????

Cil, oldlady: AFAIK there are two different rules, one for a hotel to register their guests, and the other for a visitor for one week or more to obtain a permit. Hotel registration (even if you stay there for a two months) won’t result in you getting a permit. Bottom line is, however:
This is just one more ridiculous rule nobody really should care about, because the authorities don’t care either.

We didn’t check in any on our trip.  I did several driving trip from france to Italy and back.  One trip we went for 10 days or more, staying in Venice, Florence and Rome couple days each.. other trip we staying in Milan..etc, never thought about check in, don’t even know it exist..  no border to pass, on the way back we went the route thru Italy/ Swiss, we have to pass thru  border with pass port.

Yes, because Switzerland is not part of the Schengen agreement border zone. Thanks for your first-hand report.

I’ve never registered in person in Italy, and I doubt that most of the country’s 36+ million annual visitors do.

I found this interesting information here:

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http://www.italycarservice.it/useful_tips.php
 


I’ve never crossed borders by car, but yes, I’ve enocuntered spot checks on trains between Schengen countries, perhaps to make sure you haven’t exceeded your 90-day stay in the Schengen zone.  They’re supposedly different from entry formalities, but in a sense they’re not.



Unfortunately, I can’t.  This is typical of Southern European bureaucracy.

Let’s admit that this discussion now has purely academic interest, if any.

My info originally comes from this source however in the spring of 2007 there was no distinction being made between shorter (up to 90 days) and longer visits.

This other explanation seems to make a bit more sense. In particular they say:

It would be interesting to see how they would handle all of the aforementioned 36+ millions of tourists, had they actually all applied for permessi?

Thanks, Seva.
 
I’m going to further research this peculiar Italian procedure, which I always keep forgetting about, but the question periodically comes up again at Eurotrip.  It’s always been my understanding too that the hotel submits that information for the guest to the local authorities, but you were told at the hotel in Trieste that there are two obligations, one for the hotel, and one separate for the guest.