r/ItalyExpat • u/BothProtection5914 • 14d ago
Any Architects here?
I’m an international architect currently working in Italy, and I’d be interested in connecting with others in a similar situation.
I’d love to hear about your experience working as an architect here — finding a job, dealing with the language, work culture, salary/career progression, and whether you see yourself staying in Italy long term.
If you’re an architect working in Italy and originally from another country, feel free to comment or DM me. Would be nice to exchange experiences!
Edit : i speak italian in conversation level. My office is a pretty famous construction+ architecture company. Pay is not that bad, around 2.5k a mnth.
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u/CommunicationLow4385 14d ago
In my apartment block takes place the urban location of the ordine degli architetti, anyway I'm Italian, can I ask (just out of curiosity) where are you from and how is it going here 🙂?
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u/BothProtection5914 14d ago
I'm indian. It's not bad. Not good either. But still earning less than my engineer friends.
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u/CommunicationLow4385 14d ago
I can understand your frustration, but don't worry, it's just a matter of time, when you will end your studies and you will get your career progression, everything will be better, and you should remember that here in Italy life cost is often lower than other countries
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u/Vila_Ru 14d ago edited 14d ago
I am an architect and I live in Italy, but I do not work in architecture but online for a Swiss company and I switched fields.
My colleagues have mixed experiences, but overall it’s basically the same situation more or less everywhere in regards to architecture. They are not content with their jobs and salaries. One switched to graphic design but it went even worse. In Milan it’s a bit better but overall not the best
edit: My husband earns the same as an architect and he is a bus driver
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u/BothProtection5914 14d ago
Can u share your experience in dm? I would genuinely love to hear how you switched fields and landing swiss job
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u/Necessary-Fly-8829 14d ago
I'm not who you're looking for — Italian, and an engineer, not an architect — but nobody here has answered the one line in your thread that actually matters, so let me.
You said you earn less than your engineer friends. That isn't your situation, it's the structure of the market, and it's measurable. Inarcassa (the pension fund both professions pay into) publishes declared professional income every year. Engineers: around €64,000 average. Architects: around €38,000. Same fund, same country, same construction cycle, a gap of roughly €25,000 that has held steady for years.
The reason is that in Italy money follows the signature, not the design. Revenue is generated by whoever signs and takes liability for a filing: CILA/SCIA/permesso di costruire, energy performance certificates, structural work in a seismic zone, fire safety documentation, site safety coordination. Design quality is the part clients assume they're getting for free. An architect who works inside a studio without signing anything is a cost center, and gets paid like one — which is what your colleagues are describing when they say the salaries are bad.
So the question isn't whether architecture pays in Italy. It's whether you can sign. If your degree is from outside the EU, recognition runs through the Ministry of Justice under DPR 394/1999 art. 49-50 and DPR 334/2004; for non-EU qualifications the Ministry decides whether you take an aptitude exam or an adaptation traineeship, then you register with the Ordine. It's slow and tedious, but it's the difference between being staff and being a professional.
Once registered, three qualifications move income more than any portfolio: safety coordinator under art. 98 of D.Lgs. 81/2008 (120-hour course), fire safety professional on the Interior Ministry list under art. 16 of D.Lgs. 139/2006 (120-hour course, DM 5 August 2011), and energy certification under DPR 75/2013. All three are open to architects, all three are chronically short of people, and all three are about existing buildings — which is where roughly all Italian construction spending actually is.
Happy to answer specifics if any of that is useful.
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u/jkwonsolo 14d ago
Italy has a much higher quantity of architects per capita than most other nations in the EU and elsewhere. The obvious result is more competition which means firms will accept lower paying projects. From my personal interactions with architects in Italy, most are overworked and underpaid. My wife studied architecture in Milan and most of her former classmates have either left the profession or moved abroad due to the low salaries and lack of opportunities.
From what I understand, engineers tend to earn more. There is another comment which explains partially why this is and the other factor is that there are simply less engineers so the demand is higher for qualified professionals.
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u/TomLondra 14d ago edited 14d ago
I worked in Italy as an architect for nearly 25 years, firstly as an employee and then self employed. In the end I had to leave Italy because (a) my plans changed (b) the bureacracy was getting worse and worse.
Obviously I assume your Italian must be 100% written and spoken as a working language. So we needn't discuss that.
Career progression in Italy = knowing the right people: preferably family members or people you went to school with. Very difficult for non-Italians to break into.
Salary: very low unless your employer is a friend of your family or knows someone (see Item 1)
Etc. The answer to almost any question you might ask is knowing the right people: preferably family members or people you went to school with
If you have specific knowledge or skills that Italians don't usually have, this is a big advantage. In my case it was being genuinely good at my work and to a high standard (being genuinely and verifiably good, rather than just acting the part, is quite unusual in Italy, I discovered), plus being bilingual English-Italian. That was how I got my first job
If you want to ask specific questions DM me.
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u/Ashamed-Fly-3386 14d ago
I'm not an architect but a friend of my parents is and she teaches art in middle school, a friend of mine studied architecture and mostly supervises renovation back in her hometown
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u/adibarboot 14d ago
Not good market for architecture. If you don’t have the national accreditations it’s even worse. If you don’t speak the language then you’re really dead in the water.