CATASTO AGRARIO. — This is the inventory of landed property for fiscal and civil purposes. Its usefulness was recognized by the Chaldeans 4000 years B.C., the Chinese 2205 years B.C., the Pharaohs, Solon’s Greece, the Romans, the Communes and Churches in the medieval period, the States of the Renaissance, and the modern States. There were descriptive and geometric cadastral registers (with or without topographical surveys), evidentiary or non-evidentiary registers (with or without legal proof of ownership). The first Italian cadastral register of which there is any record is that of Pisa from 1162, and the oldest to have come down to us so far is that of the Commune of Chieri from 1253. The Church of Novara had a capitular cadastral register containing the consignationes of ecclesiastical properties ordered by Bishop Amidano in 1347.
Beginning in the 17th century, the various Italian States compiled their own cadastral registers, which subsequently, with the Kingdom of Italy and the law of 1 March 1886, disappeared and were replaced by a single geometric parcel-based cadastral register, such as is in force today. Of the modern cadastral registers, the oldest is the geometric register of the Roman countryside, called the Chigi or Alexandrian cadastral register, begun at the wish of Pope Alessandro VII in 1660. In 1777 Pius VI, by an edict of 15 December, ordered the formation of a new cadastral register (completed in 1781), called the plain cadastral register, and in 1801 Pius VII, in order to restore the public finances, had the ducal cadastral register compiled, which was the last descriptive papal cadastral register. Pius VII, in fact, by a «motu proprio» of 6 July 1816, ordered the preparation of a new geometric parcel-based cadastral register which, completed in 1833, came into operation in 1835 under Gregory XVI, hence the name Gregorian cadastral register; its topographical structure, despite revisions and updates, is still in force today in those countries where the Italian cadastral register does not yet exist. The Gregorian cadastral register took the tavola of 1000 sq. m as its unit of area, and the maps were surveyed with the pretorian plane table at a scale of 1:2000. The tariff expressing the annual income yielded by a tavola of land under different cultivation (taking into account the differing degree of fertility) was determined according to the analytical method of valuation. Among the old cadastral registers, the one that most closely approaches the modern geometric parcel-based registers is the Milanese cadastre; those of the other Italian regions, however, were not equally perfect.