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Much like English, all Italian verbs in compound tenses require an auxiliary verb: either avere or essere. The auxiliary (or helping) verb allows the main verb—in its past participle mode, or participio passato—to express itself in different tenses.
In English this happens when we say, "I have eaten," or "I had eaten," "I am eating," or "I would have eaten": those have and had and am are the English counterparts of Italian auxiliaries and those tenses translate to the Italian passato prossimo, trapassato prossimo, gerund, and condizionale passato.
Auxiliaries in English and in Italian do not work exactly the same way and certainly do not correspond by tense (and believe it or not, the English auxiliaries in compound tenses are as baffling to learners of the English language). In fact, in Italian verbs use (or get) essere, avere, or either, not depending on the tense but rather depending on the behavior of the subject and the subject's relationship to the action and the object.
How to Decide?
Which verbs get essere and which avere? Often you hear that it comes down to whether the verb is transitive—in other words, it has a direct object onto which the action, so to speak, "falls;" or whether it is intransitive—in other words, it does not have such an object. It ends in itself.
According to that rule, transitive verbs get avere and intransitive verbs get essere, and therefore all you need to do is memorize or figure out which ones are which.
But that rule is plainly not accurate. In fact, there are many verbs that while intransitive, get avere. And some verbs can get either, for different uses.
What's Steadfast
This we know:
All transitive verbs get avere.
Reflexive and reciprocal verbs get essere.
Pronominal verbs also get essere.
Verbs in impersonal mode get essere.
Beyond that, verbs of movement or condition of being (to be born, to die, to grow) also are said to get essere, but some verbs in some of those groups can also get either. For example, the verb salire, which is a verb of movement: Ho salito le scale (I ascended the stairs) uses avere (and the stairs are the object), but that same action and verb can be intransitive and get essere: Sono salita a casa (I went up in the house).
Beyond that, many intransitive verbs get avere, and many can get either.
How, then, can one know?
A Way of Explaining
An easy and truer way to think about it is to reflect on the role of the subject, how he, she, it, or them "experience" the action—whether they participate in it or are affected by it—and the relationship between the subject and the object:
If the action only affects the outer world—the explicit outside object—then the verb gets avere. Ho mangiato un panino (I ate a sandwich); ho visto un cane (I saw a dog). It is a pure subject-object relationship.
If, on the other hand, or in addition, the subject of the action, or the agent, is "subjected" or somehow affected by the action (not philosophically but linguistically)—it is its "patient," undergoing the action, rather than only its agent—it takes essere (or it may take both or either).
That—the effects of the action—determines whether the verb uses essere or avere and helps makes sense of the exceptions and variations.
(Remember, of course: Many, many verbs can be used transitively or intransitively, including reflexively: You can wash your car, you can wash yourself, and two people can wash each other. Depending on the effect of the action, the first uses avere and the latter two use essere because in reflexive and reciprocal mode, the subject is impacted by the action.)
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