Which paper to hand over
Your diploma may be a single printed sheet you have kept for years. Offices rarely stamp that sheet. What they stamp is a copy or a certificate that a clerk at your school or university has signed and sealed. So the first call is to the registry that holds your student file, not to the state.
Graduates ask how to apostille a Diploma and expect the state to look at the award itself. It does not. The office checks one thing: is this signature one it knows? That is why a copy signed by a named clerk works, and why a scan you printed at home does not.
The office that stamps it
Italy has run the apostille route since 1978. One stamp, added at home, saves a queue at a foreign embassy. A paper signed inside a state school or a state university counts as administrative, so the Prefettura (Prefecture) in Padua is your desk.
Private schools sit in a different spot. Their papers are not state papers, so a notary often has to certify the copy first. Once a notary signs it, the file belongs to the Procura della Repubblica, the office at the court that handles notarial and judicial acts. Ask which kind of school issued yours before you apostille a Diploma in Italy.
Cost, and the paper people forget
The apostille cost for a Diploma in Padua is the same flat tax stamp as other papers: €16 per document. A few kinds of paper are exempt, so ask at the desk. If you also need the list of marks stamped, that is a second document and carries its own stamp.
That second paper is the one people forget. A foreign school usually wants proof of the award and proof of what you studied, which means the diploma copy plus a transcript of marks. Order both from the registry on the same day, and put both through the stamp step together.
What happens at the other end
A stamped diploma opens doors that stay shut without it. Master's applications, visa files, a licence to practise a trade, a public post, a bank's checks on a new hire: each may ask for it. Some employers accept a plain copy, so ask before you spend on anything.
Nearly everyone who needs to apostille a Diploma in Padua also needs it read in another language, so a sworn translation goes with it. Our translator swears the asseverazione, a formal oath that the words match, before a Tribunale. One caution: legalisation of a Diploma in Padua does not grade your course or promise that a foreign body will recognise the award.