Driving in Sifnos: Limited traffic zone

Sifnos, Greece · Limited traffic zone

Official name Περιοδική πεζοδρόμηση και απαγόρευση διέλευσης οχημάτων στους οικισμούς Αρτεμώνα, Απολλωνίας, Καμαρών, Βαθέος, Φάρου και Καταβατής Δήμου Σίφνου (αποφ. Δ.Σ. 66, 67, 68, 69, 70 και 72/2025, ΦΕΚ Β' 4260/13.07.2026)

What applies

Sifnos is a Cycladic island of about 2 500 people that fills with visitors between spring and autumn, and a decision gazetted on 13 July 2026 closes the middle of six of its villages to vehicles for exactly that part of the year.

It is one act approving seven separate council decisions at once, and the six that matter to a driver are these: the central road inside the traditional settlement of **Artemonas**, closed 1 June to 30 September; the central street called «Στενό» inside the traditional settlement of **Apollonia**, the island's capital, closed 1 April to 30 October; the section of road from the harbour at **Kamares** towards Apollonia, where vehicles are barred over the same 1 April to 30 October; the settlement of **Vathy**, 1 April to 30 October; the central road down to the jetty at **Faros**, 1 April to 30 October; and the central unnamed road inside the traditional settlement of **Katavati**, 1 April to 30 October. 🔑 The Kamares one is the one a visitor meets first and is worth reading twice.

Kamares is where the ferry from Piraeus and from the other Cyclades docks, so a driver coming off a boat between April and October is landing beside a stretch of road that the act closes to vehicles, and the closure is signed Ρ-7 — «Απαγορεύεται η είσοδος σε όλα τα οχήματα», no entry for any vehicle at all. ⚠️ The largest thing this record cannot tell you is what time of day each closure starts and ends, and that is a gap in what the publisher printed rather than a gap in our reading.

Every one of the six clauses orders the vertical sign «μαζί με τις απαραίτητες πρόσθετες πληροφοριακές πινακίδες για την περίοδο και το ωράριο εφαρμογής» — together with the supplementary plates for the period **and the hours** of application — so an ωράριο exists; the gazette simply does not print it.

It applies each closure «σύμφωνα με τα προβλεπόμενα στον ισχύων κανονισμό πεζοδρόμησης», and item 7 of the act's own preamble names that regulation: decision 65/2025 of the Sifnos council, ΑΔΑ 6ΞΖ7Ω1Τ-ΗΝΚ, «Κανονισμός Λειτουργίας Πεζοδρόμησης του Δήμου Σίφνου». That document is not in the gazette, is not on the municipality's website, and lives on Διαύγεια, which is closed to this project by its own robots.txt.

So this page gives you the six places and the six seasons with certainty and refuses to invent the clock. ⚠️ And it cannot tell you the day any of it started either: the act's third condition makes the measures effective «από την τοποθέτηση των οικείων πινακίδων σήμανσης» — from the moment the signs go up — and gives no date for that.

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

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 4260/13.07.2026, first item: the decision of the Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση Αιγαίου approving decisions 66/2025 (ΑΔΑ: 9ΓΤΘΩ1Τ-ΞΤ5), 67/2025 (ΑΔΑ: 9ΖΚΔΩ1Τ-Ψ28), 68/2025 (ΑΔΑ: 9Η8ΞΩ1Τ-ΝΒΜ), 69/2025 (ΑΔΑ: ΨΔΥΝΩ1Τ-ΑΚ8), 70/2025 (ΑΔΑ: ΡΔΝ7Ω1Τ-ΨΑ3), 71/2025 (ΑΔΑ: Ψ74ΓΩ1Τ-1ΡΤ) and 72/2025 (ΑΔΑ: ΨΣΔ0Ω1Τ-80Ξ) of the Δημοτικό Συμβούλιο Σίφνου, three of them «μερικώς» — in part only. Signed at Piraeus on 7 July 2026 by Κωνσταντίνος Ντουφεξής - Αμουργιανός, deputy head of the Διεύθυνση Τεχνικού Ελέγχου

Daily charge

Nothing is charged and there is nothing to buy. The act creates seasonal closures, orders the signs that mark them, attaches seven administrative conditions addressed to the municipality and stops.

No tariff, no permit, no resident's card, no visitor day pass and no fee of any kind appears anywhere in it. ⚠️ Absence of a charge is not absence of a consequence: the price of driving in is in `penalty`, and on the Ρ-55 streets it is a fine plus a licence and registration measure rather than a ticket you can buy in advance. 🔑 One thing this project cannot rule out is a charge hidden in the regulation the act defers to — decision 65/2025 of the Sifnos council, «Κανονισμός Λειτουργίας Πεζοδρόμησης», which we cannot reach.

The gazetted act contains no money; we do not claim the unread regulation contains none either.

When it operates

Six seasons, published to the day, and no clock at all — and the missing clock is the publisher's omission rather than a rule that runs around the clock.

Here is what the act does print, closure by closure. **Artemonas**, the central road inside the traditional settlement: «κατά την περίοδο από 1η Ιουνίου έως 30 Σεπτεμβρίου εκάστου έτους» — 1 June to 30 September, every year. **Apollonia**, the central street named «Στενό» inside the traditional settlement: «κατά την περίοδο από 1η Απριλίου έως τις 30 Οκτωβρίου εκάστου έτους» — 1 April to 30 October, every year. **Kamares**, the section of road from the harbour towards Apollonia: «από 1 Απριλίου έως 30 Οκτωβρίου εκάστου έτους». **Vathy**: «η οποία θα ισχύει από την 1η Απριλίου έως τις 30 Οκτωβρίου εκάστου έτους». **Faros**, the central road towards the jetty: «κατά την περίοδο από 1η Απριλίου έως τις 30 Οκτωβρίου εκάστου έτους». **Katavati**, the central unnamed road inside the traditional settlement: 1 April «έως 30 Οκτωβρίου εκάστου έτους».

Five of the six therefore run 1 April to 30 October; Artemonas alone is shorter, 1 June to 30 September, and a driver should not read the longer season onto it. 🚨 What is missing is the time of day, and the act says in so many words that it exists.

Every one of the six clauses orders the vertical sign «μαζί με τις απαραίτητες πρόσθετες πληροφοριακές πινακίδες για την περίοδο και το ωράριο εφαρμογής» — with the supplementary informational plates for the period **and the hours** of application.

A gazette that names an ωράριο and does not print it is telling you the hours are set somewhere else, and the act says where: each closure applies «σύμφωνα με τα προβλεπόμενα στον ισχύων κανονισμό πεζοδρόμησης», the pedestrianisation regulation in force, which item 7 of the preamble identifies as «την υπ' αρ.

65/2025 (ΑΔΑ: 6ΞΖ7Ω1Τ-ΗΝΚ) απόφαση του Δημοτικού Συμβουλίου Σίφνου περί Κανονισμού Λειτουργίας Πεζοδρόμησης του Δήμου Σίφνου». 🚫 We do not hold that regulation.

It is not reproduced in the gazette; the municipality's site, sifnos.gr, is a tourism site of fifty-five pages with no administrative section and its WordPress search returns nothing for πεζοδρόμηση, κυκλοφοριακ, ωράριο or κανονισμ; and the ΑΔΑ points at Διαύγεια, whose robots.txt closes it to this project and which we do not work around.

That is why this record carries no machine-readable timetable: the season is certain and the hour is not, and encoding a guess as a window would be the one thing this project must never do. ⚠️ Nothing in the act mentions public holidays, so nothing in it lifts a closure on one.

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

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 4260/13.07.2026, first item: the six operative clauses Α), Β.1), Γ.1), Δ), Ε) and Ζ.1), for the six seasons and for the sentence ordering supplementary plates carrying the hours; and item 7 of the same act's preamble, for the identity of the regulation the hours are in

Area covered

Six places on one island, each one identified by a village, a description of a single road, and one surveyed point. The act prints its geometry as small tables of ΕΓΣΑ 87 coordinates — the Greek national grid, in metres — headed ΧΨΠΙΝΑΚΙΔΑ, x, y and sign.

Read in the order the act takes them: **Artemonas**, «στην κεντρική οδό εντός του παραδοσιακού οικισμού Αρτεμώνα», table «ΠΕΡΙΟΔΙΚΗ ΠΕΖΟΔΡΟΜΗΣΗ ΟΙΚΙΣΜΟΥ ΑΡΤΕΜΩΝΑ», one row, 564410 4092636, sign P-55. **Apollonia**, «στην κεντρική οδό με επωνυμία «Στενό» εντός του παραδοσιακού οικισμού της Απολλωνίας», one row, 564247 4091962, signs P-55 and Ρ-7. **Kamares**, «στο Τμήμα οδού Λιμάνι Καμαρών - Απολλωνία», one row, 560149 4093552, sign Ρ-7. **Vathy**, «στον οικισμό Βαθύ», one row, 561366 4087501, sign Ρ-7. **Faros**, «στην κεντρική οδό προς την προβλήτα στον οικισμό Φάρου», one row, 566856 4088587, sign P-7. **Katavati**, «στην κεντρική ανώνυμη οδό εντός του παραδοσιακού οικισμού Καταβατής», one row, 564254 4091445, sign P-55. 🔑 What the sign codes mean is fixed by the Highway Code and is the clearest description of each closure available, because the act's own words vary while the signs do not. ν.

5209/2025 article 7 defines **Ρ-55** as «Οδός υποχρεωτικής διέλευσης πεζών (πεζόδρομος, απαγορευμένης της διέλευσης άλλων εκτός πεζών, οχημάτων άμεσης ανάγκης και οχημάτων για την είσοδο - έξοδο σε παρόδιες ιδιοκτησίες)» — a pedestrian street that still admits emergency vehicles and vehicles going in and out of a property on it — and **Ρ-7** as «Απαγορεύεται η είσοδος σε όλα τα οχήματα», entry prohibited to all vehicles, with no exception written into the sign at all. ⚠️ So the six closures are not all the same closure.

Artemonas and Katavati get Ρ-55 alone; Apollonia's Στενό gets Ρ-55 **and** Ρ-7 together, which is the stricter of the two stacked on the more permissive; and Kamares, Vathy and Faros get Ρ-7 alone, even though Vathy and Faros are described in the act's own words as «περιοδική πεζοδρόμηση», pedestrianisation.

A village the act pedestrianises but signs as a plain no-entry is a mismatch between the words and the sign, and we record it as printed rather than resolving it. ⚠️ One point is not an area and it is not even a line.

The Antiparos decision in this corpus at least gave «Αρχή» and «Τέλος», a start and an end; here each closure is a single coordinate, which locates the sign and says nothing about how far past it the closure runs. Where the closed stretch ends is on the ground, not in this document.

See `boundary_coverage`. ⚠️ Not in this record, and deliberately: the same act also orders stopping and parking prohibitions at Artemonas square, at Kamares, in the settlement of **Kastro** and at Katavati, disabled parking bays at Apollonia, Kastro and Katavati, a STOP sign at Kamares, and STOP, no-left-turn and no-entry signs at the Apollonia–Vathy exit at Katavati.

Those regulate where you may leave a car, not whether you may drive in, and Kastro receives no access restriction at all from this act.

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

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 4260/13.07.2026, first item, for the six road descriptions and the six coordinate tables; read together with ν. 5209/2025 (ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025) article 7 §5, which defines sign Ρ-7 at ζ) and sign Ρ-55 at ξ)

Why there is no map here
The publisher shipped surveyed coordinates and they still cannot become a boundary, and this is a thinner version of the same shortfall as Antiparos rather than a different one. Antiparos gave two points per zone, «Αρχή» and «Τέλος», which at least describe a line; Sifnos gives **one** point per closure — 564410 4092636 at Artemonas, 564247 4091962 at Apollonia, 560149 4093552 at Kamares, 561366 4087501 at Vathy, 566856 4088587 at Faros, 564254 4091445 at Katavati — and a single coordinate locates a signpost, not an extent. Our boundary contract is a MultiPolygon. Turning one point into an area would mean inventing both the course and the length of a road we have never measured, and both would be our line rather than the municipality's. 🚫 It does NOT heal by reading the gazette more carefully: the six one-row tables are the whole of the published geometry, the issue carries no site plan for this item, and the text is fully readable (scripts/check-strings.mjs: «holds», 8 content streams, 25 483 characters extracted). ✅ It heals if the Δήμος Σίφνου publishes the technical service's studies as geometry, or if the «ισχύων κανονισμός πεζοδρόμησης» — council decision 65/2025, ΑΔΑ 6ΞΖ7Ω1Τ-ΗΝΚ — turns out to carry a described perimeter. ⚠️ Neither could be asked for in this cycle. The municipality's own host, sifnos.gr, is a tourism site whose sitemap lists fifty-five pages and eight posts with no administrative section, and whose WordPress search returns zero for πεζοδρόμηση, πεζοδρομ, κυκλοφοριακ and ωράριο; sifnos.gov.gr and dimossifnou.gr do not resolve in DNS; and Διαύγεια, where the ΑΔΑ-numbered council decisions sit, is closed by its own robots.txt and is respected as closed. map_url therefore points at the gazette issue itself, which is where the published extent actually is — as six single rows of six small tables rather than as a drawing, and a reader should know that before clicking.

The authority's own map: Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση Αιγαίου / Δήμος Σίφνου, Τμήμα Τεχνικών Υπηρεσιών Δόμησης…

Petrol standard

This scheme sets no emission threshold, and the absence is structural rather than unrecorded. The act asks two questions about a vehicle — is it on one of the six closed roads inside the closed season, and is it one of the kinds the sign still admits — and it asks nothing about what comes out of the exhaust. A Euro 6 hire car is barred exactly as a Euro 1 one is.

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 act contains no emission class of any kind, for any fuel. The only vehicle characteristics that decide anything here are function and destination — emergency vehicle, or a vehicle entering or leaving a property on the road, and only where the sign is Ρ-55 — and neither distinguishes a diesel from a petrol vehicle in any month.

Penalty if you do not comply
€350.00 The act prints no figure at all; every number here is read from the statute, and which number applies depends on which of the six villages you are in. 🚨 **The €350 is the Ρ-55 road.** Artemonas, Apollonia's Στενό and Katavati are signed Ρ-55, which makes them πεζόδρομοι, and article 20 §4 of ν. 5209/2025 forbids a driver to circulate «σε πλατείες, πεζόδρομους, πεζοδρόμια, νησίδες ασφαλείας…»; article 20 §8 β) puts that breach in category Ε3-Β and in category Σ; and article 108 §5 γ) γα) prices Ε3 at «διοικητικό πρόστιμο τριακοσίων πενήντα (350) ευρώ». The money is the smaller half: γβ) adds withdrawal of the driving licence **and of the vehicle's registration documents for thirty days**, and δ) adds a further forty days' withdrawal of the licence for the category Σ classification. For a hire car, a measure against the registration documents is a measure against papers that are not yours, and the Code does not say how a rental company's documents are treated, so neither does this record. ⚠️ **The Ρ-7 roads are a different and cheaper offence.** Kamares, Vathy and Faros are signed Ρ-7 alone. Article 7 §11 ε) classifies non-compliance with Ρ-7 — together with Ρ-8 to Ρ-14, Ρ-18 to Ρ-28, Ρ-30, Ρ-31, Ρ-45, Ρ-46, Ρ-64 and the Ρ-73/Ρ-74 family — in category **Ε2-Β**, and article 108 §5 β) ββ) prices Ε2-Β at the Ε2-Α fine of «εκατόν πενήντα (150) ευρώ» plus withdrawal of the driving licence for twenty days. No registration-document measure and no category Σ. 🔑 Vathy and Faros are the uncomfortable pair, because the act calls them «περιοδική πεζοδρόμηση» while signing them Ρ-7. If a court reads them as πεζόδρομοι on the strength of the act's words, article 20 §4 reaches them at €350; if an officer reads the sign, article 7 §11 ε) reaches them at €150. Nothing we hold decides between those, and this record does not pretend to. 🔑 A third route reaches the Ρ-55 streets more cheaply still: article 7 §11 ζ) classifies non-compliance with Ρ-55 in category Ε1-Α and in category Σ, which article 108 §5 α) αα) prices at €30, with the forty-day licence measure still attached. So the Code reaches the same car on the same street through two provisions an order of magnitude apart. We publish the higher one, because a driver planning a trip should be told the worse case. 🔑 Stopping or parking on a pedestrian street, as opposed to driving along one, is a different and smaller offence again: article 38 §2 ι) with §11 α), category Ε1-Α, €30, halved for mopeds and motorcycles.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 «Κώδικας Οδικής Κυκλοφορίας», the Highway Code in force since 13 September 2025 and the Code this act itself proceeds under. Article 7 §5 defines the signs and §11 classifies non-compliance with them — ε) puts Ρ-7 and Ρ-24 in category Ε2-Β, ζ) puts Ρ-55 in Ε1-Α and in Σ; article 20 §4 prohibits driving on a πεζόδρομος and §8 β) puts that in Ε3-Β and in Σ; article 38 §2 ι) with §11 α) covers stopping and parking on one; and article 108 §5 sets the whole tariff — Ε1-Α €30, Ε1-Β €30 plus ten days, Ε2-Α €150, Ε2-Β €150 plus twenty days, Ε3-Α €350, Ε3-Β €350 plus thirty days' withdrawal of licence and registration documents, and category Σ a further forty days' withdrawal of the licence

How to comply
  • Know which of the six villages you are heading into, because the seasons are not the same. Apollonia's Στενό, Kamares, Vathy, Faros and Katavati are closed 1 April to 30 October every year. Artemonas is closed 1 June to 30 September only — a shorter season, and the one place on the island where an early-May or an October arrival makes a difference.
  • 🚨 The Kamares closure is the one that will meet you off the ferry. Kamares is the island's port, and the act bars vehicles from the section of road running from the harbour towards Apollonia between 1 April and 30 October, signed Ρ-7 — no entry for any vehicle. Plan the first two hundred metres of your drive before the ramp goes down, not on it.
  • ⚠️ We cannot tell you the hours, and you should assume nothing from the season. Each clause orders supplementary plates carrying «την περίοδο και το ωράριο εφαρμογής» — the period and the hours — and the gazette prints the period and not the hours. The hours are in the municipality's own pedestrianisation regulation, council decision 65/2025, ΑΔΑ 6ΞΖ7Ω1Τ-ΗΝΚ, which is not published anywhere this project can lawfully reach. Read the plate under the sign: it is the only place the hours are written where a driver can see them.
  • ⚠️ Do not assume the closure runs all day, and do not assume it is only in the evening. Both would be guesses. Greek island pedestrianisations in this corpus vary enormously on exactly this point: Hersonissos closes only in the evening and only in the warm half of the year, while Antiparos closes at every hour of every day. Nothing licenses carrying either pattern onto Sifnos.
  • Look at which sign is facing you, because it decides what you may do and what it costs. Ρ-55, the round blue pedestrian-street sign at Artemonas, at Apollonia's Στενό and at Katavati, still admits emergency vehicles and vehicles going in and out of a property on that road. Ρ-7, the red-bordered no-entry sign at Kamares, Vathy and Faros — and also at Apollonia, alongside the Ρ-55 — admits nothing at all on its face.
  • If your accommodation is on one of the closed roads, ask the owner before you arrive rather than deciding at the sign. The property-access exception only exists where the sign is Ρ-55, it only covers going in and out, and it is a matter of where the door is, not of who is staying behind it. A general "yes, there is parking" does not answer the question.
  • ⚠️ If the posts are bare, the rule has not started yet. The act's third condition makes the measures effective «από την τοποθέτηση των οικείων πινακίδων σήμανσης, των σηματοδοτών ή των διαγραμμίσεων στο οδόστρωμα» — from the installation of the signs, the signals or the road markings — and gives no date. This record therefore cannot tell you the day any of the six closures began.
  • ⚠️ The price of getting it wrong depends on the sign and is not a parking ticket either way. On the Ρ-55 streets, driving on a pedestrian street is a category Ε3-Β and category Σ breach: €350, plus thirty days' withdrawal of the driving licence and the vehicle's registration documents, plus a further forty days' withdrawal of the licence. On the Ρ-7 roads it is category Ε2-Β: €150 plus twenty days' withdrawal of the licence.
  • 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 act, so anything offering to sell you access to a Sifnos village is not the municipality.
  • ⚠️ The municipality's website will not confirm any of this. sifnos.gr is the Δήμος Σίφνου tourism site — fifty-five pages about beaches, footpaths, pottery and festivals — and it carries no traffic regulations at all; its search returns nothing for πεζοδρόμηση or κυκλοφοριακ. There is no separate administrative host: sifnos.gov.gr and dimossifnou.gr do not resolve in DNS. This record rests on the national gazette and on the Highway Code. If a sign on the ground says something different from this page, the sign is the law.
Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Β' 4260/13.07.2026, first item, for the six closures, their seasons, their signs, the supplementary-plate sentence, the deferral to the municipal pedestrianisation regulation and the commencement condition; read together with ν. 5209/2025 (ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025) article 7 for what signs Ρ-7 and Ρ-55 mean and for the category each breach falls in, and articles 20, 38 and 108 for the sanctions

Sources

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

Before you set off

Also in Sifnos

A city can run more than one scheme, and they do not always answer the same question.

Other cities in Greece

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