Greece: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.
Patras has one driving restriction on our books: the Τροποποίηση του εγκεκριμένου ρυμοτομικού σχεδίου πόλεως Πατρών του… (limited traffic zone). What is a limited traffic zone?
Sources last read on 2026-09-24, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-23.
Patras is the largest city of the north-western Peloponnese and the Greek end of the ferry crossing from Italy, so a great many drivers meet it with a car they have just landed.
Its old core, the grid climbing from the waterfront towards the castle, has been designated «παραδοσιακό» — traditional — since a presidential decree of 25 April 1996, and on 1 July 2022 a second presidential decree turned seven pieces of that core into pedestrian streets. 🔑 This record was the first of its kind in this corpus, and the difference is worth understanding before you read the rest — it is now shared with one other Greek page, Alexandroupoli, and with no third.
Most Greek pages here rest on a traffic-regulation act: a municipal council decides, a decentralised administration approves, and the measure takes effect when the signs go up. This one rests on a town-planning decree signed by the President of the Republic on the proposal of the Minister of Culture and Sports and the Deputy Minister of Environment and Energy, after an opinion of the Council of State.
It does not order signs.
It changes what these streets legally are, in the city's own approved plan, and the Highway Code then does the prohibiting. 🔑 The six streets it names: οδός Σισίνη for its whole length from Palaion Patron Germanou to the north perimeter road of Ypsila Alonia square; the stretch of οδός Μαιζώνος between Aratou and Gounari; the north branch of οδός Τριών Ναυάρχων between Agiou Andreou and Othonos Amalias; the stretch of οδός Παντοκράτορος between 25is Martiou and Ileias, together with the streets ringing the western side of Pantokratoros square; the stretch of οδός Σωτηριάδου between Mitropoliti Neofytou and Eisodion; and οδός Εισοδίων.
A seventh item is an unnamed lane west of the Church of Pantokratoras, which the decree locates but does not name. 🚨 Read the timing honestly. Article 2 of the decree says its force begins on publication in the government gazette, with no condition attached — that is a real commencement date, 1 July 2022, and it is firmer than the sign-dependent commencement the rest of this corpus's Greek set carries.
But more than four years have passed, this project holds nothing that says whether the works were built or how the streets are signed today, and a plan designation and a kerb are not the same object. The decree is the authority for what these streets are; the sign on the street is what you will actually be looking at.