An automatic method to assign lexical stress in Italian from a written text is presented here. This method is based on specific morphological properties of the Italian morphemes, which can only be stressed on the last or the penultimate syllable. Using a morphological analyzer and a morpheme database, the assignment program attempts to analyze each entry into a morpheme followed by one or more suffixes and flexions, which can contain a stressable syllable. The resulting stressed syllable is determined by applying a simple final stress rule to these elements.