What is CAP in Italy? All about Italian postal code

For sending a letter or parcel to Italy, you may need a special postal code. In Italy’s version such postal codes or ZIP codes are called CAP. What is its feature, we will tell in this article.

What does Italian CAP mean?

CAP is the current postal code system that operates in Italy. Routing information in specific format is provided for all the Italian cities and towns. In total there are 28 CAPs which belong to Italian city centres.

CAP abbreviation means “Codice di Avviamento Postale” what can be translated as Postal Sending Code in English.

How many digits are in CAP?

Italian ZIP codes look like 5-digit combination without hyphens, underlinings, commas or other punctuation. CAP examples: 00187, 52100, 40121, etc.

CAP structure

Each postal code in Italy consists of such numbers:

• The first two digits represent exact administrative province or several provinces (in case it was split after 1967).
• The third digit shows the status of the town. If the locality is the chief-town of the province, it will be an odd number (often — 1 or 9). If it is not, the third digit of CAP will be even (usually 0 or 8).
• The last two digits demonstrate exact town or village. It also can mean the delivery post office (in case if it is new province founded after 1992).

CAP of main Italian cities such as Rome, Milan, Venice and others contains two last digits which mean the urban postal district. It is often written as 00 or 70 in minor provincial chief-towns.

Italian postcodes by provinces

Below you can see what digit the postal codes in Italy start with.

*Where XXX is unique number combination.

Italian postcode system also contains San Marino (starting with “47”) and the Vatican City (00120).