First of all, it is worth highlighting that when there is well-founded reason to believe that the body of evidence or, anyway, things pertaining to the crime are in a specific place or that the arrest of the accused or the escaped person can be carried out there, a local search is ordered by the Judicial Authority (the Public Prosecutor, during the investigations, and the Judge, during the trial phase), with a reasoned decree.
The Judicial Authority can proceed personally or arrange for the act to be carried out by judicial police officers delegated with the same decree.
Generally talking, no differences occur with regard to the nature of the place to be searched (vehicle, domicile, office, residence).
However, the search in a house, or in closed places adjacent to it, cannot be started before seven o'clock and after twenty o'clock. In urgent cases, though, the Judicial Authority may provide in writing that the search be carried out outside the aforementioned time-limits.
Moreover, during the preliminary investigations, in urgent cases – when a crime is being committed or in the case of evasion or when (provided that there are particular reasons of urgency that do not allow the issuance of a timely search decree by the Judicial Authority) it is necessary to proceed with the execution of an order that provides for pre-trial detention or an order that orders the imprisonment of a person sentenced for some certain serious crimes – a local search may also be carried out – subject to the general conditions provided for by the law – by judicial police officers, even outside the said time-limits if the delay could jeopardize its outcome. In these cases, the judicial police shall send without delay, and in any case no later than forty-eight hours, to the Public Prosecutor of the place where the search was carried out the report of the operations. The Public Prosecutor, if all the set conditions are met, validates the search in the following forty-eight hours.