Corps of the Port Captaincies – Coast Guard
coast guard of Italy
The Corps of the Port Captaincies – Coast Guard (Corpo delle Capitanerie di porto – Guardia costiera) is the coast guard of Italy and is part of the Italian Navy under the control of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. Its head office is in Rome.
Missions
The missions of the Italian Coast Guard include:
Search and rescue
Maritime law enforcement
Protection of marine resources
Safety of navigation
Fisheries protection and regulation
History
The Italian Coast Guard is the operational SAR branch of the Corpo delle Capitanerie di Porto or Corps of the Port Captaincies, which was organized first by royal decree on 20 July 1865. It was reorganized as part of the Regia Marina of Kingdom of Italy in 1915-1945 (since 1946 as Marina Militare) and on 8 June 1989, redesignated as Guardia costiera.
Structure and organization
Structure
The Corps of the Port Captaincies – Coast Guard is structured as follows:
1 MARICOGECAP – Port Captaincies General Headquarters – Comando generale, which functions of Italian Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre (IMRCC)
15 DIREZIOMARE – Maritime Directorates – Direzioni marittime, which are at the head of as many Maritime Rescue Sub-Centre Commands (MRSC)
55 COMPAMARE – Maritime Departments / Port Captaincies – Compartimenti marittimi / Capitanerie di porto
51 CIRCOMARE – Maritime District Offices – Uffici circondariali marittimi
126 LOCAMARE – Local Maritime Offices – Uffici locali marittimi
61 DELEMARE – Maritime Delegations or Beach Delegations – Delegazioni marittime or Delegazioni di spiaggia
Moreover, the following services are also part of the Corps:
the air-sea component;
the Cospas-Sarsat satellite station of Bari (in synergy with the Civil Protection Department);
the five Underwater Operators Groups (San Benedetto del Tronto, Naples, Messina, Cagliari and Genoa);
the two Nautical Teams (Lake Garda – Salò; Lake Maggiore – Verbania)
the Marine Environmental Division of the Port Captaincies by the Ministry for the Environment and Protection of the Territory;
the group by the General Fishery Direction of the Ministry of Agriculture.
The coast guard also has an air wing.
Tasks
The Corps of the Port Captaincies – Coast Guard is a Corps of the Italian Navy that has tasks and functions connected mostly to the civil use of the sea and with functional dependence of various ministries that avail themselves on their work: first of all the Ministero dei trasporti (Ministry for Transports) which has "inherited" in 1994, from the Ministry of the Merchant Navy, the major part of the functions connected to the use of the sea and the connected activities with the commercial and pleasure navigation an on whose budget weighs the costs for the running of the corps.
The principal tasks of the Corps activities are the following:
Search and rescue at sea (SAR) with the entire organization of co-ordination, control, detection and communications active for 24 hours a day requested by this activity;
Safety of navigation, with systematic investigative controls on the entire national mercantile, fishing and pleasure shipping, through the activity of Port State Control, also on the foreign mercantile shipping that calling at the national ports;
Protection of the marine environment, with functional dependence of the Ministero dell'ambiente e della tutela del territorio (Ministry for the Environment), using for this aim also resources (operations' centers, aeronaval crafts, naval traffic control systems) already used for tasks of rescue, safety of navigation, and maritime police;
Control on maritime fishery, with functional dependence on the Ministero per le politiche argicole e forestali (Ministry of Agriculture): at this end the general command is the responsible authority of the National Fishing Control Center and the Captaincies carry out the controls prescribed by the national and community norms on the entire fishing fleet;
Peripheral administration of State functions in the matters of formation of the maritime personnel, of registration of the mercantile and fishing shipping, of pleasure shipping, and of the contentious for those maritime crimes that have been de-penalized;
Maritime police (namely technical-administrative maritime police), including the discipline of maritime navigation and the regulation of the events that are carried out in the maritime areas that fall under the national sovereignty, the control of the maritime traffic, the manoeuvre of the ships and the safety in the ports, inquiries on the maritime accidents, the control on the maritime State property, the testing and periodic inspections of coastal deposits and other hazardous installations.
Other functions are carried out for the Ministries of defence (enrollment of the military personnel), for Cultural Activities and Treasures (underwater archaeology), of internal affairs (anti-illegal immigration), of Justice and the department of civil protection, all having as a common denominator the sea and navigation. The broadness and the variety of activities carried out present the Corps of the Port Captaincies – Coast Guard as an organism of reference for the maritime activities and make of them a true "sole counter" for the relations with the seafarers.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Corps of the Port Captaincies – Coast Guard” as coast guard of Italy. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1552839. VIAF identifies the subject as 172045062. The Library of Congress control number is n2011044004. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1865, 1915, 1945 and 1946.
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