At Southern Italy Travel – Explore your roots we offer a friendly, professional Italian genealogy service for those who wish to explore the story of their Italian ancestors and heritage. Southern Italy Travel was born in 2012 with the purpose of bringing family history to life, by offering travel itineraries based on our clients’ genealogy.
Learn about us
Something about us
Based in Italy, and with our specialist insight of Italian resources and history, we can help you uncover your family’s past and present. Thanks to a carefully selected network of local tour guides and genealogists with a strong local knowledge, you are sure to experience an unforgettable journey back to your roots, through the most unspoiled destinations in Italy.
Our values
Ethics
Our mission is to provide high quality genealogy services and private tours everywhere in Italy. We work every day towards that goal. Unlike others, our business is not focused on maximum productivity, but on our customer satisfaction. We aim at creating a genuine connection with our guests, for this reason we only accept a limited number of customers per month.
Authenticity
We want you to experience authentic Italy, far from the large tourist masses. The travelers we serve want to do unique things, experience the reality of a place and see its culture through the eyes of a local person. That’s why our private tours are perfectly suited to travellers wanting a sense of the place and contact with locals.
Sustainability
We are aware of the environmental downside of larger tour groups. For this reason we consciously keep our ecological and cultural footprint as small as possible, operating with individuals and small groups only. In this way, we can deliver the benefits of tourism without the negative aspects of mass tourism.
Who we are?
Core Team
Mirella Ammirati
Founder/ Genealogist
Southern Italy Travel was created and is owned by Mirella Ammirati. Born in Abruzzo, a marvelous and yet undiscovered region of Italy, Mirella studied a degree in Foreign Languages and Tourism Management in Bologna.
As a world traveler herself, Mirella loves traveling and exploring off-the-beaten-path destinations, all while directly interacting with local villagers and appreciating their local history and traditions. She fluently speaks five languages.
Upon graduation in Mandarin language, she moved to China where she worked in the travel business for some years. During her Chinese experience Mirella had the opportunity to create a business plan which continued to develop through the years, until she decided to go back to Italy and start her own business.
It was her strong passion for genealogy and history that led her to found Southern Italy Travel. She currently resides in Abruzzo and works full-time conducting onsite genealogy researches and organizing Ancestry tours throughout Italy. She is an APG member – Association of Professional Genealogists – and a licensed tour guide.
Stefano Ammirati
Genealogist/Tour guide
Stefano Ammirati caught the same passion as his sister Mirella for genealogy and history. The two siblings followed different paths but both found themselves reunited by the same wish: helping people reconnect with their Italian roots.
Upon completing his Academic degree in International Cooperation and Development in Rome, Stefano lived and worked abroad for a couple of years, he learned multiple languages and returned to his hometown in Italy because “that’s the place where I belong”.
He soon started assisting Mirella with genealogical researches and leading Ancestry tours. His interest in genealogy and anthropology, his strong commitment and dedication to helping those in search of their roots contributed at making Southern Italy Travel more like family rather than a company because this is how we want our clients to feel like: home.
Mirella and Stefano did an amazing job. Thorough, professional, creatively dogged in their investigation of our family roots only begins to describe how they made our pilgrimage to the town of our Italian origins an unforgettable, emotional experience. Involving local residents in the day helped add a warm, personal touch we did not anticipate — opening doors to shops and homes that helped our family history come alive. There’s an overused line about giving 110 percent that makes no sense. You can’t possibly give more than 100 percent. Somehow, Mirella and Stefano did. We cannot thank them enough.
Phil, Theresa, Samir ,
U.S.AMirella has such a passion for her job and envelops you with that love. What impressed me was her facility for putting the pieces of this puzzle together, and opening the doors for me to have an outstanding life experience. She acted as guide, translator, interpreter - oh what fun we had - me and my fractured Italian, and my cousins with little knowledge of English. That didn't stop us from story telling, laughing, revelling in the experience, and truly feeling like 'family'. And Mirella was an integral part of it all.
Althea De Gregorio ,
U.S.A.Mirella is just a lovely person who understands the importance of the day for us. Unlike other guides, it wasn't about her; it was about us, and our connection to our relatives and homeland. It's an emotional day and she understands the importance of it. She also understood what it meant to the locals in the two towns we visited, and she connected us with them and let them relay their story of emigration (from people who stayed behind) with tact and grace. Working with Mirella and visiting our ancestral town was the highlight of our trip.
Katie Sullivan ,
U.S.A.