Greece: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.
Mytilene has one driving restriction on our books: the Έγκριση κυκλοφοριακών ρυθμίσεων ετήσιας περιοδικής πεζοδρόμησης στο… (limited traffic zone). What is a limited traffic zone?
Sources last read on 2026-09-23, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-22.
Mytilene — the harbour town that ferries from Piraeus and from Ayvalık arrive at, and the place most visitors to Lesvos land — closes its historic centre to vehicles for eleven months of the year, and the number that matters to a driver is the one month that is left.
The gazette calls the scheme an «ετήσια περιοδική πεζοδρόμηση», an annual periodic pedestrianisation, and when it was first approved in June 2024 that meant a seven-month season from 15 April to 15 November. A second amendment, gazetted on 14 May 2025, replaced the season with a window running from 10 February each year to 10 January of the next one.
So the closed streets below are closed all day and every day, and the only stretch of the calendar in which they are ordinary roads is 11 January to 9 February. 🔑 What closes is a connected block behind the waterfront, plus the street that runs through the middle of it.
Sections of Ermou are banned to vehicles around the clock from Kornarou, at Epano Skala, down to Agiou Therapontos — with two short lengths deliberately left open in both directions so that residents can reach their doors, Mitropoleos to Pergamou and Adramytiou to Simantiri.
Eight more streets are closed around the clock for the whole season: Methodiou over its full length, Chrysostomou Smyrnis in two lengths, Ioakeim G΄, Palaion Patron Germanou over its full length, L. Voutsika, Limnou and Komninaki.
Athanasiou Mitrelia and Ladadika were originally closed only at night — the ban ran 20:00 to 06:00 — and the 2025 amendment closed them around the clock as well, ordering the removal of the extra signs at the Ikarias junction that had carried the old hours.
A separate closure surrounds the Chatzidimou Park, where circulation is anticlockwise and Komninaki from Skra to the park is banned to vehicles. ⚠️ A visitor is not in any of the categories allowed in.
The decision admits shop supply vehicles between 05:00 and 10:00, refuse and street-cleaning vehicles, municipal service vehicles, ambulances, fire engines and police, and any vehicle holding a special transit permit issued by the Δήμος Μυτιλήνης. Around the Chatzidimou Park a second and narrower exemption exists for residents of that area and guests of the hotel there who hold a transit card.
There is no tourist permit, no day pass and no tariff of any kind anywhere in either decision. 🔑 Three times a year the ban on Ermou lifts for a few hours and the whole street legally carries traffic: 25 March and 28 October from 11:00 to 14:00, and 8 November from 08:00 to 14:00.
Those are Greece's two national holidays and the anniversary Lesvos keeps for itself, and the exemption exists for the parades rather than for drivers.