Driving in Hersonissos: Limited traffic zone

Hersonissos, Greece · Limited traffic zone

Official name Κυκλοφοριακές ρυθμίσεις και ωράριο τροφοδοσίας καταστημάτων στον Λιμένα Χερσονήσου (απόφ. 97/2025, ΦΕΚ Β' 2937/12.06.2025)

Not in force in Hersonissos right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 12:04 · Europe/Athens

  • Not in force Every vehicle except a permanent resident's with a parking space or a parking card, a business owner's with a parking space, and ambulance, fire, police and refuse vehicles — on the eight pedestrianised segments named in the decision

Starts Tuesday, 13 October 2026 at 18:00 local time.

This timetable covers the eight pedestrianised segments and nothing else in the resort. A verdict of "in force" means those eight are closed at that moment; it says nothing about the street the reader is actually on unless that street is one of them, and the decision's own table is the list.

The stopping and parking bans on Filikis Etairias, Spyrou Kassaveti, Daskalogianni, Eleftherias, Agias Paraskevis (Papadogiorgi–Navarchou Nearchou) and the seafront length of Navarchou Nearchou run all year round and are deliberately NOT encoded here. They are not a timetable — there is no hour at which they lift — so encoding them as an always-on rule would make every verdict on this record say "in force" and hide the seasonal answer that is the useful one.

The supply windows, 07:00–10:00 and 16:00–18:00, are a permission and not a restriction, so they are absent from the rules above. They let a supply vehicle stop where stopping is banned; they do not close anything, and adding them would invert their meaning. Note that the afternoon window ends exactly where the evening pedestrian window begins.

The last night of the season is our reading, not the publisher's. The window opens at 18:00 on 31 October and ends at 05:00 on 1 November, a date outside the order. It is encoded as in force because a window belongs to the day it starts on, and the decision does not address the point.

The four admitted categories cannot be seen by a timetable. A permanent resident with a parking space, a resident with a parking card, a business owner with a parking space and the emergency and refuse services may drive in at any hour the rule is in force, so for them the schedule over-warns in every window.

Public holidays are not encoded because the decision does not mention them. It exempts no day of the year, and Greek public holidays fall inside the season — 1 May itself is one, and 15 August is another — so a reader should expect the rule on those evenings, not an exemption.

Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.

What applies

Limenas Chersonisou — the beach resort that English-speaking visitors call Hersonissos — closes eight named street segments to traffic every evening of the summer season, and the rule is unusually easy to state: from 1 May to 31 October, between 18:00 and 05:00, they are pedestrian streets.

Outside that window the same streets reopen as ordinary one-way or two-way roads, and the decision spells out the direction each of them takes when it is open, which is why this is a navigation fact rather than a sign to be read on arrival.

The streets are the ones a visitor actually walks down: three consecutive lengths of Agias Paraskevis, the resort's bar and restaurant spine, together with Daidalou, Sanoudaki, Oulof Palme, a length of 25is Martiou and one unnamed connector, all of them between the old harbour and the main road. 🔑 Who may still drive in is a short list and a visitor is not on it: permanent residents who hold a parking space, owned or rented, permanent residents using a parking card, business owners with a parking space, and the ambulance, fire, police and refuse services.

There is no tourist permit, no day pass and nothing to buy — the decision creates no charge of any kind.

What it creates instead, for anyone delivering to a shop, is a timetable: supply runs are confined to 07:00–10:00 in the morning and 16:00–18:00 in the afternoon, and during those windows a supply vehicle — and only a supply vehicle — may stop where stopping is otherwise banned. ⚠️ The most important thing on this page is a limit on it.

The instrument published here approves only the part of the traffic study that falls on the MUNICIPAL road network; its own title says so, and the table it prints is headed "municipal roads that do NOT affect the national network".

The municipality's public consultation of January 2025 proposed a second and larger set of pedestrian streets — Minoos, Evangelistrias, Papadogiorgi, 28is Oktovriou, Emmanouil Marangaki, Giampoudaki, Michail Aspetaki, Machis Kritis and more — in the table headed "municipal roads that DO affect the national network", along with a 30 km/h limit on the old national road through the resort.

None of that is in this gazette issue, and we have not found it approved anywhere else.

So a driver in Hersonissos should expect to meet more pedestrianised street than this record can source, and should treat the eight segments below as the part that is certainly in force rather than as the whole of it. ⚠️ One further difference between the proposal and the act is worth carrying, because it runs both ways: the consultation pedestrianised Agias Paraskevis from Machis Kritis to Solomou and said nothing about 25is Martiou, while the published decision does the opposite.

The published decision is the one that governs, and it is the one quoted here.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 2937/12.06.2025: αριθμ. απόφ. 97/2025 of the Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση Κρήτης, approving decisions 23/2025 and 40/2025 of the Δημοτικό Συμβούλιο Χερσονήσου on traffic regulations and shop supply hours in Limenas Chersonisou, "κατά το τμήμα που αναφέρονται στο δημοτικό οδικό δίκτυο" — for the part relating to the municipal road network. Signed at Gournes on 19 May 2025 by the chair, Evangelos Kokodroulis

Daily charge

Nothing is charged and there is nothing to buy. The decision creates a pedestrian street for part of the day and part of the year, names the categories that may still drive into it, and stops there: no permit, no tariff, no fee for a resident's card, no visitor day pass.

The words that would carry a charge — τέλος, πρόστιμο for entry, κόστος — appear nowhere in the operative text. ⚠️ Two things a visitor might mistake for a charge are not one.

The parking card the decision mentions («μόνιμοι κάτοικοι με χρήση κάρτας για στάθμευση») is an eligibility document for residents and the decision sets no price for it, so this record does not say whether one is payable; and the single disabled bay created in front of the Port Fund building is a reserved space, not a paid one.

Neither is a way for a visiting driver to buy entry, because the decision offers no such way at all.

When it operates

From 1 May to 31 October, every day, between 18:00 and 05:00. Those are the hours in which the eight segments listed in the decision are pedestrian streets, and the decision states them in one repeated formula — «Πεζόδρομος από 01-05 έως 31.10 και από ώρες από 18:00 έως 05:00» — beside every one of them.

Outside that window the street is a road again, and the decision says what kind: for each segment it names the direction of travel «για τις ώρες και ημέρες που θα επιτρέπεται η κυκλοφορία», so a closure here never leaves a driver without a published alternative.

From 1 November to 30 April none of the eight is pedestrianised at any hour. 🔑 A second, entirely separate clock governs deliveries, and it applies whether or not a street is pedestrianised: supply hours for shops are «Πρωί: 07:00 έως 10:00» and «Απόγευμα: 16:00 έως 18:00», and during them a supply vehicle — and only a supply vehicle — may stop in places where stopping is otherwise forbidden.

That is a permission with a timetable, not a second restriction, and the two must not be added together: the afternoon supply window ends at 18:00, which is the minute the evening pedestrian window begins. ⚠️ What the decision does not say is what happens to the last night of the season. The window opens at 18:00 on 31 October and runs to 05:00, which falls on 1 November, outside the dates the order gives.

We encode it as in force, because a time window belongs to the day it starts on, and we say so rather than presenting it as the publisher's answer. ⚠️ Public holidays are not mentioned at all — not exempted, not named — so the rule reads as applying on them like any other day.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 2937/12.06.2025, αριθμ. απόφ. 97/2025: the pedestrianisation column of Πίνακας 2 for the seasonal window and the reopened direction of each segment, and part ΙΙΙ «Καθορισμός ωρών τροφοδοσίας των καταστημάτων» for the two supply windows

Area covered

Eight street segments in Limenas Chersonisou, each named by the decision with the junction it starts at and the junction it ends at, and each carrying the direction it reverts to when the pedestrian window closes.

Agias Paraskevis appears three times — from Minoos to Filonidou Zotou, which reopens one-way towards Zotou; from Zotou to Navarchou Nearchou, which reopens two-way; and from Minoos to Machis Kritis, which reopens one-way towards Machis Kritis.

The other five are Daidalou from Kriton Agoniston to Agias Paraskevis, which reopens one-way towards Agias Paraskevis while the rest of Daidalou stays two-way; Sanoudaki from Kastriou to Agias Paraskevis, reopening two-way; Oulof Palme from Archaiou Theatrou to Agias Paraskevis, reopening two-way; 25is Martiou from Machis Kritis to Solomou, reopening one-way towards Solomou; and an unnamed street («Ανώνυμος») from Solomou to Vitsentzou Kornarou, reopening one-way towards Vitsentzou Kornarou. 🔑 Three further bans run all year and are not pedestrianisations, so a driver meets them in February as well as in July.

Stopping AND parking are forbidden on Filikis Etairias from the Cultural Centre to the old national road on both sides, on Spyrou Kassaveti for about 30 m from the driving school to Eleftheriou Venizelou, on Daskalogianni from Eleftheriou Venizelou as far as the "voula hotel" — and permitted again from that hotel to the Zaloggou junction — and on the right-hand section of Eleftherias from Nikou Kassaveti to Filikis Etairias; on those four, stopping is allowed only for a supply vehicle resupplying a shop.

Parking alone, with stopping still allowed, is forbidden on Agias Paraskevis from Papadogiorgi to Navarchou Nearchou on both sides, on the seafront length of Navarchou Nearchou, and on Eleftherias from Eleftheriou Venizelou to Nikolaou Kassaveti.

One disabled bay is created in front of the building housing the Port Fund, signed Ρ-71. ⚠️ The boundary of this record is the boundary of the instrument, and it is narrower than the resort.

The decision approves the traffic study only «κατά το τμήμα που αναφέρονται στο δημοτικό οδικό δίκτυο», and the table it prints is headed «Ρύθμιση της κυκλοφορίας δημοτικών οδών που δεν επηρεάζουν το Εθνικό δίκτυο» — municipal roads that do not affect the national network.

Everything the same study proposed on or beside the old national road, which is Eleftheriou Venizelou through the middle of the resort, is in a different table and is not approved here. ⚠️ And the shape is published only as street names.

Seven site plans, Τ1 to Τ7, are referenced throughout and the gazette carries them as image pages — the file is 30.5 MB for 12 854 characters of text — so the lines they draw cannot be read back as coordinates.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 2937/12.06.2025, αριθμ. απόφ. 97/2025: Πίνακας 2 for the eight pedestrianised segments and their reopened directions, part Ι.2 for the four stopping-and-parking bans, part Ι.3 for the three parking bans, and part ΙΙ for the disabled bay in front of the Port Fund

Why there is no map here
The municipality drew this scheme before it gazetted it, and both copies of the drawing are pictures. The decision refers to seven site plans, Τ1 to Τ7, beside almost every regulation it makes, and the gazette issue carries them: ΦΕΚ Β' 2937/2025 is 30.5 MB for a decision whose text is 12 854 characters, and scripts/pdf-stream-prose.py reports «prose 0 · unmapped 12» across the streams it can inflate, with fifteen pages after the operative text yielding no characters at all. The same seven plans are downloadable from the municipality's consultation page as separate PDFs of 1.9 to 3.15 MB each, which is the map_url above — it is the authority's own and it is where a driver can look at the drawing. ⚠️ Two reasons this is published_unusable rather than held, and the second is the one a later cycle needs. First, a raster plan is not geometry and tracing it by eye would be our line rather than the municipality's. Second, and independently: the plans on that page belong to the PROPOSAL, not to the act. The consultation's tables and the gazetted table differ in both directions — the proposal pedestrianises Agias Paraskevis from Machis Kritis to Solomou and the decision does not; the decision pedestrianises 25is Martiou from Machis Kritis to Solomou and the proposal does not — so a polygon traced from Τ1–Τ7 would be a picture of what was asked for, not of what was approved. This heals if the municipality publishes the approved regulations as geometry, or if it publishes the street list of the national-network half so that the two tables can be reconciled; it does NOT heal by re-reading the plans in a better viewer. No open-data portal was found at the Δήμος Χερσονήσου to look for a polygon in, and diavgeia.gov.gr, where the underlying council decisions 23/2025 and 40/2025 sit, is closed to us by its own robots.txt.

The authority's own map: Δήμος Χερσονήσου, Διεύθυνση Τεχνικών Υπηρεσιών / Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο

Petrol standard

This scheme sets no emission threshold, and the absence is structural rather than unrecorded. The decision asks three questions about a vehicle — is it inside one of the eight segments, is it inside the seasonal evening window, and does its driver belong to one of the four admitted categories — and it asks nothing at all about what comes out of the exhaust.

A Euro 6 hire car is barred at 19:00 in July exactly as a Euro 2 one is, and a resident's Euro 0 van with a parking space is admitted. Greece publishes no national low-emission scheme of the Italian or German kind that this project has read, and this record makes no claim either way about one.

Diesel standard

The same as for petrol, and for the same structural reason: the decision contains no emission class of any kind, for any fuel. The only vehicle characteristic it uses is function — supply vehicle, ambulance, fire, police, refuse — and the only driver characteristic is residence or business premises with a parking space. Nothing in it distinguishes a diesel from a petrol vehicle at any hour of any month.

Penalty if you do not comply
€350.00 The decision itself prints no figure, and the €350 is read from the statute rather than from the act. Driving a vehicle on a pedestrian street is prohibited by article 20 §4 of the Greek Highway Code now in force, and article 20 §8 β) classifies that breach in category Ε3-Β and additionally in category Σ; article 108 §5 γ) γα) prices a category Ε3-Α breach at «διοικητικό πρόστιμο τριακοσίων πενήντα (350) ευρώ». ⚠️ The money is the smaller half of the consequence, and a visitor should read the rest before deciding it is a parking-ticket-scale risk. Under article 108 §5 γ) γβ) a Ε3-Β breach carries that same fine PLUS withdrawal of the driving licence and of the vehicle's registration documents for thirty days, and under §5 δ) a breach also in category Σ — the code's label for antisocial road behaviour — carries a further forty days' withdrawal of the licence on top. For a hire car in a foreign visitor's hands that is a measure against the documents in the car, and this record does not know how a rental company's papers are treated, because the Code does not say. 🔑 A different and much smaller figure covers the parking bans on this record: stopping or parking at the entrance to or on a pedestrian street is article 38 §2 ι), classified by §11 α) in category Ε1-Α, which article 108 §5 α) αα) prices at «διοικητικό πρόστιμο τριάντα (30) ευρώ», halved for mopeds and motorcycles by the closing sentence of article 38 §11. Driving in and parking in are therefore two offences an order of magnitude apart, and the €350 above is the heavier of the two ways a driver can be reached by entering. ⚠️ Added on 2026-09-23 (D-275), after Antiparos sent us back into article 7: the Code reaches the same act a second time and much more cheaply. Article 7 §11 ζ) classifies failure to comply with the obligation imposed by sign Ρ-55 — the pedestrian-street sign these eight segments are marked with — in category Ε1-Α and in category Σ, which is the €30 tariff plus the forty-day licence measure and no thirty-day measure against the vehicle's documents at all. So two provisions of the same Code price driving into a Greek pedestrian street an order of magnitude apart, nothing we hold says which one an officer uses, and this record publishes the higher because a driver should plan for the worse case. What it must not do is print €350 as though it were the only answer.Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025: ν. 5209/2025, the Greek Highway Code now in force. Article 20 «Θέση επί της οδού» §4 prohibits driving «σε πλατείες, πεζόδρομους, πεζοδρόμια…» and §8 β) puts that breach in category Ε3-Β and in category Σ; article 7 «Σήμανση οδών με πινακίδες» §11 ζ) separately classifies non-compliance with signs Ρ-33, Ρ-54, Ρ-55, Ρ-56, Ρ-65, Ρ-66, Ρ-66α, Ρ-67, Ρ-67α and Ρ-76 in category Ε1-Α and in category Σ, which is the second and cheaper route to the same act; article 108 «Κατηγοριοποίηση παραβάσεων» §5 sets the tariff for every category; article 38 §2 ι) and §11 α) cover stopping and parking on a pedestrian street. Article 114 §4 keeps regulatory acts issued under the 1999 Code in force, which is why a decision gazetted on 12 June 2025 — the day before this law was published — survives the repeal in article 115 β); article 132 §1 put that repeal three months after publication, on 13 September 2025

How to comply
  • Work out first whether the date and the hour put you inside the rule at all. It runs from 1 May to 31 October and from 18:00 to 05:00, and nowhere else. Arrive on 20 March, or at 16:00 in August, and the eight segments below are ordinary streets with the directions the decision gives them.
  • Inside the window, treat the resort's bar and restaurant spine as closed. Agias Paraskevis is pedestrianised over three consecutive lengths — Minoos to Filonidou Zotou, Zotou to Navarchou Nearchou, and Minoos to Machis Kritis — which between them cover the part of it a visitor is aiming for.
  • The other five closures are Daidalou from Kriton Agoniston to Agias Paraskevis, Sanoudaki from Kastriou to Agias Paraskevis, Oulof Palme from Archaiou Theatrou to Agias Paraskevis, 25is Martiou from Machis Kritis to Solomou, and the unnamed street from Solomou to Vitsentzou Kornarou. Four of the eight end at Agias Paraskevis, so the closure is a connected block rather than eight scattered streets.
  • ⚠️ Do not plan to drive out of a closed street the way you drove in. When the window is over, each segment reopens with a direction the decision fixes, and three of the eight are one-way: Minoos–Filonidou Zotou towards Zotou, Minoos–Machis Kritis towards Machis Kritis, and Daidalou towards Agias Paraskevis. If your accommodation is on one of these, the way in at 17:00 is not the way out at 06:00.
  • ⚠️ You are almost certainly not in an admitted category. The decision lets four kinds of vehicle into a pedestrian street: a permanent resident with a parking space owned or rented, a permanent resident using a parking card, a business owner with a parking space owned or rented, and ambulance, fire, police and refuse vehicles. A hotel guest is not on that list, a holidaymaker with a hire car is not on it, and there is no permit the decision offers you to get onto it.
  • If your accommodation is inside the block, ask before you arrive where the car goes and say what time you will get there. The people who may drive in are the ones with a parking space, and the right question for a hotel or a villa owner is not "can I park" but "do you have a space that admits my car after 18:00". Assume the answer is no unless it is explicitly yes.
  • Delivering rather than visiting? Then the clock you need is a different one: supply runs are 07:00–10:00 and 16:00–18:00, and inside those windows a supply vehicle — and only a supply vehicle — may stop where stopping is otherwise banned. ⚠️ Note where the afternoon window ends: 18:00 is the minute the evening pedestrian window starts, so there is no overlap to work in.
  • ⚠️ Four streets ban stopping and parking all year, not just in summer: Filikis Etairias from the Cultural Centre to the old national road on both sides, about 30 m of Spyrou Kassaveti below the driving school, Daskalogianni from Eleftheriou Venizelou as far as the "voula hotel", and the right-hand side of Eleftherias from Nikou Kassaveti to Filikis Etairias. On all four the only stop allowed is a delivery, in the windows above.
  • Three more streets ban parking while still allowing you to stop: Agias Paraskevis from Papadogiorgi to Navarchou Nearchou on both sides, the seafront length of Navarchou Nearchou, and Eleftherias from Eleftheriou Venizelou to Nikolaou Kassaveti. Setting someone down there is not the same offence as leaving the car there.
  • ⚠️ Expect to meet more pedestrian street than this page can source, and plan for that rather than argue with a sign. The decision published here approves only the municipal-network half of the traffic study. The municipality's own consultation of January 2025 proposed pedestrianising Minoos, Evangelistrias, Papadogiorgi, 28is Oktovriou, Emmanouil Marangaki, Giampoudaki, Michail Aspetaki and Machis Kritis on the same 1 May–31 October, 18:00–05:00 pattern, plus a 30 km/h limit on the old national road through the resort. We have not found any of that approved, so it is not on this record — but a sign on the ground is the law whether or not we have read the act behind it.
  • ⚠️ The price of getting this wrong is not a parking ticket. Driving on a pedestrian street is a category Ε3-Β and category Σ breach of the Greek Highway Code: €350, plus thirty days' withdrawal of the driving licence and the vehicle's registration documents, plus a further forty days' withdrawal of the licence for the Σ classification. The Code also reaches the same act through non-compliance with the Ρ-55 sign, which is €30 plus the forty days and nothing against the vehicle's documents; nothing we hold says which provision an officer will use, so plan for the larger one. Parking on a pedestrian street, as opposed to driving along one, is €30 either way.
  • There is nothing to buy and nowhere to buy it. No permit, no day pass, no online form and no charge appears anywhere in the decision — so if something is offering to sell you access to Hersonissos's pedestrian streets, it is not the municipality.
Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 2937/12.06.2025, αριθμ. απόφ. 97/2025, for the eight segments, their reopened directions, the four admitted categories, the stopping and parking bans and the supply windows; read together with the Δήμος Χερσονήσου consultation of 14 January 2025 for the proposed regulations on and beside the national road that this decision does not approve, and with ν. 5209/2025 for the sanctions

Sources

Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-22.

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