The Perfect Tense — Il Passato Prossimo

1. This is a compound tense — i.e. composed of two words — auxiliary verb and past participle.
2. This tense corresponds to two different tenses in English:

The Simple Past: e.g. I visited Italy last year.

The Present Perfect: e.g. She has gone on holiday for a month.

N.B. This means that the English "I went" and "I have gone" are the same in Italian. (But also I did go)

To make this tense you need the present tense of avere followed by the past participle of the verb you want.
You already know the present tense of avere, so you now need you learn how to make the past participle.
The table below explains how:

So, to say in Italian "I have finished" you say Ho (I have) finito (finished); if you want to say "I finished" it is also Ho finito.
It is important that you understand that you can only make the past tense in Italian in two words — auxiliary verb and a past participle. Here is the full past tense of the verb vedere (to see) :

ho veduto	I saw; I have seen	abbiamo veduto	we saw; we have seen
hai veduto	you saw; you have seen	avete veduto	you saw; you have seen
ha veduto	he/she saw; has seen	hanno veduto	they saw; they have seen

Note that the past participle does not change when the auxiliary verb is avere.

If you have learned French you will see that the system is exactly the same.

The vast majority of verbs make their past participle by following the pattern in the table above, but some do not follow the general rule; they are called strong verbs. You have to learn them as you meet them but listed below you will find some of the most common verbs. Learn them now!

You will see that the verb vedere (to see) has two past participles: veduto and visto; choose whichever you like.

Verbs which require the verb essere as the auxiliary:

Intransitive verbs (usually verbs of motion - displacement - changes in states of being or lack of motion or displacement) and all the reflexive verbs require essere as the auxiliary verb, not avere. This means that you use the present tense of essere and the past participle.

N.B. When essere is the auxiliary, the past participle agrees with the subject of the verb. 

For example: “The girls have left” = Le ragazze sono partite.
          “The boys arrived late” = I ragazzi sono arrivati in ritardo.
             “The children woke up early” = I bambini si sono svegliati presto.

Listed below are the most common verbs which require essere as their auxiliary; learn them now be careful to learn the strong past participles.