I would love to work in Italy - I flirt with the idea every day while I am cadding away. However, there's been posts where supposedly of all EU countries Italy has the lowest salary for architects.
Do you speak italian? My friend told me you walk into a bar in Italy and say "Architetto!"...and 3/4 of the room turns around. There's too many architects and not enough work there. Do you have an EU passport?

i whole heartedly believe i following your dreams, but with this one - good luck!!!

architects are indeed many and salaries are many a time a full-on joke for an adult professional. quality of life outside of wages however has no comparison anywhere in europe as far as i'm concerned.

thanks for the replies.
Its kind of what i expected to hear, but was hoping i wouldnt!
I speak basic italian, which im hoping wont take too long to brush up, im from the EU and ive just graduated.
unfortunately theres too many architects where im from too, and zero work.
Do you work in Italy legeuse?

i work in london and have a (quite recent) eu degree just like you. i did exchange studies in milan and turin and know a lot of young italian architects and often hear about quite miserable salary levels, extremely demanding and authoritarian bosses and so on. it doesn't necessarily always have to be that way though, so try to browse around a bit. languagewise my experience is that italians are very open to foreigners and very impressed (and helpful) if they speak even just a little italian so that's probably no issue for you. if you can find a decent financial deal i'd say there are few places around where you live better, generally speaking.

one other thing - obviously i have no idea on how much of a career you intend making of your time in italy - is the issue of professional registration. i might be completely wrong, but i think even as a foreigner you can't get out of being in the 15% that pass the "esame di stato" (1 written, 1 oral exam, requiring quite a linguistic level and extensive knowledge of italian building code) in order to get a full professional licensing. in italy that means the right to even call yourself "architetto" (well, maybe not in the bar..:-). i'm in no way sure though so anyone here with a better insight into the italian system please correct me if needed!

thanks for the detailed reponse! would you be able to estimate a figure as to what kind of salary i'd be looking at? (how miserable is miserable? :)

1000 euros/mn before tax.

and IMO that pretty miserable.

it is indeed, considering that a reasonably central studio flat in milan (at least 4 years ago) would set you back about €800-€1000 a month. food and such is obviously great "value for money" as the english like to say :) but you still need to earn that good value food money. i've heard a lot worse than €1000 gross pay unfortunately. i have however also heard a few slightly better, so you never know. i guess you could say that way too many young architects take home a monthly pay that makes it flatly impossible to live anywhere else than with their parents, and even with that saving on rent you don't have a whole lot to spend left. it's getting to be quite a problem in the whole society (going obviously outside our profession as well) and italy has one of the lowest nativity rates in the world. there's no better way to abstinence than living with your folks, as someone said..:/

but this is off the point: if you can manage the finances you should go, because the architecture that surrounds you every day will be amazing, food you do manage to buy will be nothing short of great, always, and you'll get to work with some of the most socially apt, open, cultured and industrious people you'll ever meet.

i wish i lived in italy :]

yeeeouch. thats fairly miserable allright considering the cost of rent. ill have to look elsewhere i think. thanks guys

sorry..

good luck anyway.