Embassy legalisation for use in Vietnam
To legalize documents for Vietnam the paper travels through two Italian hands and one Vietnamese one. The state desk in Italy vouches for the signature on the record. Vietnam's mission here then attests what the state has done, and it is that consular mark a Vietnamese office looks for when the file is handed in.
Vietnam consular requirements
The consular legalization for Vietnam is the closing step, so everything before it has to be tidy. The mission works from the original document, with the Italian stamp on the same sheet and the signatures running in an unbroken line. An embassy attestation for Vietnam is given on that original rather than on a cover note, so a translation, where the file needs one, is added before that step.
The Messina to Vietnam route step by step
Start by sorting the pile. A birth record, a marriage record, a school certificate or a police record is public, and it goes to the Prefettura, the state's office in the province. A court paper or a deed drawn up by a notary goes to the Procura della Repubblica at the courthouse. A private paper is certified by a notary before either desk can act on it.
Then the papers move as one batch. The Italian stamp and the €16 marca da bollo go on document by document, and the file travels north to the mission for the final attestation. A family moving to Ho Chi Minh City for work often has four or five papers running this way at once, and they come back together.
Cost and timing for this route
The Italian tax stamp is €16 for each document, and the mission charges its own fee on each attestation, so an official fee applies at that end too. Standard handling takes 10–15 business days and the express track 3–5. Both are counted from a complete bundle, which is the part of the timetable you control.
Anyone arranging embassy legalization for Vietnam from Messina does best to fix the deadline first and work backwards from it. Document legalization for Vietnam is not slow by itself; it turns slow when a paper goes into the chain in the wrong form and has to come back out again.