Italy has long been regarded as the country with negligible non-maritalcohabitation par excellence, but lately the pattern has begun to change and entryinto consensual unions has increased strongly in younger Italian generations. Thisarticle is devoted to a study of such features between 1980 and 2003 based on thedata from the Italian variant of the Gender and Generations Survey, Round 1. Weconsider entry into marriage and entry into cohabitation as competing risks andshow how the incidence of cohabitation consistently much lower but has increasedby some 70% over the 20-odd years of our study, while the marriage rate hasdropped by almost as much. We find great variation across major regions of thecountry. The rise in cohabitation is confined to Northern and Central Italy, while therisk of marriage formation has declined strongly all over the country. Unlike previousinvestigations, our data suggest that non-marital cohabitation may be takingover whatever minor role civil marriage has had in Italian union formation.