Driving in Thessaloniki: Limited traffic zone

Thessaloniki, Greece · Limited traffic zone

Official name Τροποποίηση του εγκεκριμένου ρυμοτομικού σχεδίου του Δήμου Θεσσαλονίκης για τον καθορισμό τμήματος της οδού Ασημάκη Φωτήλα, μεταξύ των οδών Κατσάνου και Παπαδιαμαντοπούλου, ως πεζόδρομου (ΦΕΚ Δ' 749/01.11.2024), με την έγκριση του αποκλεισμού της κυκλοφορίας οχημάτων (ΦΕΚ Β' 1828/26.03.2024)

In force in Thessaloniki right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 12:05 · Europe/Athens

  • In force Every vehicle on the stretch of οδός Ασημάκη Φωτήλα between οδός Κατσάνου and οδός Παπαδιαμαντοπούλου, in central Thessaloniki. 🚫 The two cross streets that name the ends are not themselves converted, and neither is the remainder of οδός Ασημάκη Φωτήλα beyond them. 🔑 Exceptions exist, they are now sourced, and they are still not windows: each one admits a named class of vehicle, not an hour. The Highway Code allows a vehicle to enter and leave the parking of an abutting property, and the municipality's own «ΚΑΝΟΝΙΣΜΟΣ ΛΕΙΤΟΥΡΓΙΑΣ ΠΕΖΟΔΡΟΜΩΝ ΔΗΜΟΥ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗΣ» names the rest — emergency services and public-utility vehicles, hearses, municipal refuse and technical-service vehicles, a resident driving to an off-street space they own or lawfully lease under a municipal permit that states its validity and the vehicle's plate, private car parks and car repair shops with an entrance on the street, Α.Μ.Α. disabled-badge cars to and from a home inside the pedestrianised area, and removals, concrete, demolition and building-materials traffic up to sixteen tonnes on a limited-duration permit. They are listed in full under `how_to_comply`.

The empty window list is the instrument's own shape and not a missing fact. A town-planning amendment converts a street permanently; ΦΕΚ Δ' 749/01.11.2024 prints no season, no weekday and no hour, so a verdict of "in force" is correct at every hour of every day. 🚫 It must not be read as a timetable this project failed to find.

🚨 This says what the stretch legally is; it cannot tell you what is on the ground. The traffic act's own words are that its regulations «εφαρμόζονται με την τοποθέτηση - εγκατάσταση της σχετικής κατακόρυφης - οριζόντιας σήμανσης» — they are applied when the signs and markings are installed — and no published act names when that happened or whether it has. The plan amendment is the authority for the character of the street; the sign at the kerb is what you will be reading when you drive it.

🚨 The exemptions are real, they are now sourced, and this encoding still cannot see them — so the rule above still over-warns, and it does so on purpose. The municipality's «ΚΑΝΟΝΙΣΜΟΣ ΛΕΙΤΟΥΡΓΙΑΣ ΠΕΖΟΔΡΟΜΩΝ ΔΗΜΟΥ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗΣ» (council decision 1712/19-12-2016) is what the traffic act cites for access here, and it was read from the municipality's own «Κανονιστικές Αποφάσεις» page on 2026-09-25. 🚫 None of it becomes a window. Every permission in its Article 4 admits a named class of vehicle — an ambulance, a refuse truck, a resident with an off-street space, an Α.Μ.Α. badge holder, a concrete mixer on a permit — and a window would tell every driver that the street is open at that hour, which is exactly the error this corpus wrote down at Αργοστόλι. The classes are stated in `how_to_comply` instead.

🚨 And the regulation's own scope lands on the same undated fact the traffic act does, in two sentences that do not say the same thing. Its paragraph 1.1 applies it to designated pedestrian streets «που φέρουν τη σχετική σήμανση» — that bear the relevant signage — and to streets that are to be designated in future, «εξαιρουμένων αυτών για τους οποίους υπάρχει είτε θα εγκριθεί ιδιαίτερος Κανονισμός Λειτουργίας τους». Its paragraph 8.1 reaches «στους υπάρχοντες πεζόδρομους και σε οδούς που θα χαρακτηρισθούν ως πεζόδρομοι με μελλοντικές κανονιστικές αποφάσεις», with no signage condition at all. 🔑 This project cannot say what is standing at that junction, so it cannot say which of the regulation's two scope sentences reaches this stretch today. Both are quoted rather than chosen between. ✅ What can be said is that no separate regulation for this street was found and the traffic act cites the general one, which is the publisher's own answer to paragraph 1.1's carve-out.

🚨 Three other Thessaloniki streets were approved for exclusion in exactly this way and are deliberately absent, because their own acts say they are not yet in force. Οδός Αγνώστου Στρατιώτη between Ολύμπου and Αγίου Δημητρίου (ΦΕΚ Β' 4947/21.09.2022), and οδός Κορίνθου between Αιτωλικού and Παπάφη together with οδός Οδυσσιτών between Κορίνθου and Στρ. Γενναδίου (ΦΕΚ Β' 1225/07.03.2023), each carry the same clause suspending the regulations until the town-plan amendment completes, and this project found no planning act for any of them. 🚫 Their absence is not permission either — it is the publisher's own position that the procedure is unfinished.

⚠️ One stretch is not the city, and it is not even all of Thessaloniki's pedestrian streets. The municipality had a pedestrian-street regulation as early as 2016 and a 2018 gazette listed twenty-nine of its pedestrian streets by name, so the network is large and long-standing. This record holds the one conversion this project could source to both halves of the procedure that made it. 🚫 The absence of any other Thessaloniki street from this record is not permission to drive it.

Public holidays are not encoded, because neither act mentions them. Neither exempts a day or a date.

The schedule is derived from `hours` and carries no fact that is not in the two gazetted acts.

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

What applies

This is a short street in central Thessaloniki that stopped being a street for cars, and it is here because the project could follow the conversion from end to end in the gazette — which is rarer in Greece than it sounds. 🔑 Greek law runs pedestrianisation as an «ενιαία διαδικασία», a single procedure with two halves that are published separately, and both halves of this one exist.

The traffic half is ΦΕΚ Β' 1828 of 26 March 2024, in which the Secretary of the Decentralised Administration of Macedonia and Thrace approved the municipal council's decision «όσον αφορά στον αποκλεισμό της κυκλοφορίας οχημάτων στο τμήμα της Δημοτικής οδού Ασημάκη Φωτήλα, μεταξύ των οδών Κατσάνου και Παπαδιαμαντοπούλου» — the exclusion of vehicle traffic from that stretch — and recorded that the approval covers «μόνο τα μόνιμα μέτρα ρύθμισης της κυκλοφορίας», permanent measures only.

The planning half is ΦΕΚ Δ' 749 of 1 November 2024, in which the Deputy Regional Governor for Infrastructure and Networks of Central Macedonia amended the town plan to designate the same stretch «ως πεζόδρομου», and whose Article 2 fixes force on publication with no condition attached. 🚨 The order matters more than it looks.

The traffic decision suspends itself until the planning one happens: it says in its own words «Οι κυκλοφοριακές ρυθμίσεις της παρούσης ισχύουν με την ολοκλήρωση της διαδικασίας τροποποίησης του ρυμοτομικού σχεδίου του υπό παρέμβαση οδικού τμήματος και εφαρμόζονται με την τοποθέτηση - εγκατάσταση της σχετικής κατακόρυφης - οριζόντιας σήμανσης».

Three other Thessaloniki streets carry the same approval and the same suspending sentence and have no planning act in the gazette, so they are not on this page and are not closed as far as this project can source. 🚨 Two limits belong next to all of that.

The second condition — the signs — cannot be dated from any published act, so what is written here is what the street legally is, not what is standing at the kerb. 🆕 And the municipality's own pedestrian-street regulation — «ΚΑΝΟΝΙΣΜΟΣ ΛΕΙΤΟΥΡΓΙΑΣ ΠΕΖΟΔΡΟΜΩΝ ΔΗΜΟΥ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗΣ», cited by the traffic act and approved by municipal council decision 1712/19-12-2016 — is now held and read.

It is not in the gazette and it never was: the municipality publishes it itself, as a PDF on its own «Κανονιστικές Αποφάσεις» page under the Διεύθυνση Έργων Αναπλάσεων και Συντηρήσεων Δημοσίου Χώρου. So who may drive here by exception is stated below, from the regulation's own Article 4, and is no longer a thing this page has to say it does not know. 🚨 The route to it is worth more than the document.

ΦΕΚ Β' 1828 prints the decision's ΑΔΑ as «7ΣΠΗΩΡ5-ΑΩ3», and that key returns nothing whatever in Διαύγεια; the decision is filed under «7ΣΠΗΩΡ5-Α3Ω», the last two characters the other way round.

Both were put to the register's own open-data search on 2026-09-25 — 0 results and 1 result, the one result being decision 1712/2016 ΑΔΣ of 19 December 2016 of Δήμος Θεσσαλονίκης, «την επανέγκριση του Κανονισμού Λειτουργίας πεζοδρόμων του Δήμου Θεσσαλονίκης». A published lookup key can be wrong, and a zero-result lookup on one is not evidence that the document does not exist.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-24
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο (National Printing House) — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Δ' 749/01.11.2024, ΤΕΥΧΟΣ ΤΕΤΑΡΤΟ, item 3 of the issue: decision 652145(1657) of the Αντιπεριφερειάρχης Υποδομών και Δικτύων of the Περιφέρεια Κεντρικής Μακεδονίας, signed at Thessaloniki on 18 October 2024 by ΠΑΡΙΣΗΣ ΜΠΙΛΛΙΑΣ

Daily charge

Nothing is charged and there is nothing to buy. Neither act creates a zone entered on payment, a permit, a camera or a tariff, and the word «τέλος» appears in neither. A driver who is not entitled to be on this stretch is not short of a payment — the street is not for driving on, and the consequence is the Highway Code penalty recorded under `penalty`.

When it operates

The conversion has no hours, and that is the instrument's own shape rather than a fact this project failed to find. A town-planning amendment does not set a timetable: it changes what a street is, permanently and at every hour, until another act changes it back.

ΦΕΚ Δ' 749/01.11.2024 prints no season, no weekday, no clock and no calendar date other than its own commencement. 🔑 What it does print, in Article 2, is the sentence most Greek traffic acts in this corpus withhold: «Η ισχύς της απόφασης αυτής αρχίζει από τη δημοσίευσή της» — force begins on publication.

The masthead of that issue reads «1 Νοεμβρίου 2024», and that is the date carried below; the gazette's own index dates the issue 2024-11-04, and the masthead is what this corpus quotes. 🚨 The traffic act's commencement is the more interesting of the two and it is a condition rather than a date.

ΦΕΚ Β' 1828/26.03.2024 states «Οι κυκλοφοριακές ρυθμίσεις της παρούσης ισχύουν με την ολοκλήρωση της διαδικασίας τροποποίησης του ρυμοτομικού σχεδίου του υπό παρέμβαση οδικού τμήματος και εφαρμόζονται με την τοποθέτηση - εγκατάσταση της σχετικής κατακόρυφης - οριζόντιας σήμανσης» — its regulations take effect when the town-plan amendment completes, and are applied when the vertical and horizontal signing is installed. 🔑 The first of those two conditions is exactly what ΦΕΚ Δ' 749 did, five months later, which is why this record can carry a real date at all. ⚠️ The second cannot be dated from anything published: no act names a signing programme, a contractor or a completion date, and this project holds nothing that says what stands at that junction today. 🆕 There is a second clock in this scheme, it has now been read, and it does not change the answer above.

The traffic act cites the municipality's «Κανονισμός λειτουργίας Πεζοδρόμων του Δήμου Θεσσαλονίκης», approved by decision 1712/19-12-2016 of the municipal council and ratified by document 3703/22-2-2017 of the Decentralised Administration, and the municipality publishes that regulation itself, on its own «Κανονιστικές Αποφάσεις» page. 🔑 It sets no hours for the street as such.

Its paragraph 3.5 forbids «η διέλευση, η στάση και η στάθμευση όλων των οχημάτων (μηχανοκίνητων, τρικύκλων, δικύκλων) στους πεζόδρομους και στις εισόδους τους καθ' όλο το 24ωρο» — passage, stopping and parking of every vehicle, at the entrances too, at every hour — and everything in its Article 4 is a permission for a named class of vehicle rather than an hour in which the street opens. 🚨 The one timetable it does print is a goods-loading timetable, and it is not the one in force.

Paragraph 4.5 opens «εφόσον δεν έχει με σχετική Απόφαση Δημοτικού Συμβουλίου καθοριστεί διαφορετικά» — unless otherwise fixed by a council decision — and then gives lorries of up to 8 tonnes payload four different bands according to where the pedestrian street is: 06:30–08:30 inside the commercial historic centre and its wider area, 02:30–08:30 on weekdays for the streets there that have exclusively commercial or other non-residential use, 06:30–08:30 and 20:30–22:30 for the streets outside it, and 06:00–07:30 for those adjoining school complexes, with «Αργίες ελεύθερα» in all four.

ΦΕΚ Β' 6645/06.12.2024 then fixed one band — 10:00 to 12:00, Monday to Saturday, up to 3.5 tonnes payload — for «όλους τους πεζόδρομους» of the municipality. ⚠️ Neither instrument mentions the other.

The 2024 decision repeals only provisions referring to decision 57/2018, and all seven occurrences of «κανονισ» in that issue were read on 2026-09-25 and belong to the unrelated first item of it, an EU agricultural-subsidy amendment. 🚫 So the later, municipality-wide act is what this page states for deliveries, and the regulation's own bands are recorded for what they are: earlier, differentiated by area, and not repealed in writing.

This project also does not place this stretch inside or outside the historic-centre perimeter the regulation draws in street names, because that would be its line and not the publisher's (D-096) — and under the 2024 act the answer is the same either way.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-24
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Δ' 749/01.11.2024, Article 2, the commencement clause, together with the commencement condition of ΦΕΚ Β' 1828/26.03.2024

Area covered

One stretch of one street in the centre of Thessaloniki: οδός Ασημάκη Φωτήλα, between οδός Κατσάνου and οδός Παπαδιαμαντοπούλου.

Both acts name the same three streets in the same order and neither adds a length, a width, an area or a coordinate. 🔑 The operative words of the planning act are «Εγκρίνεται η τροποποίηση του εγκεκριμένου ρυμοτομικού σχεδίου του Δήμου Θεσσαλονίκης, με τον καθορισμό τμήματος της οδού Ασημάκη Φωτήλα, μεταξύ των οδών Κατσάνου και Παπαδιαμαντοπούλου, ως πεζόδρομου, στο πλαίσιο της ενιαίας διαδικασίας για τον πολεοδομικό και κυκλοφοριακό καθορισμό της εν λόγω οδού ως πεζόδρομου». 🚨 That last phrase — the unified procedure for the town-planning and traffic designation of the street as a pedestrian street — is the whole reason this record exists in the shape it does, and the gazette says where the procedure comes from: document Δ.Ο.Υ/2696/Φ252/18-05-2018 of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, «στο οποίο περιλαμβάνονται τόσο η κυκλοφοριακή όσο και η πολεοδομική ρύθμιση για τον καθορισμό πεζόδρομων». 🚫 The extent is given by street names and end points only.

A certified original coloured topographic diagram at 1:500 exists — Article 1 says it was endorsed by the Head of the Spatial Planning Section of the Region's General Directorate of Planning and Infrastructure and that it «συνοδεύει την απόφαση αυτή» — but, unlike the Alexandroupoli decree in this corpus, the act does not say that a photo-reduced copy is published with it, and no drawing page was found in the issue: read on 2026-09-24, all eight pages of ΦΕΚ Δ' 749 come out as continuous running text across its three unrelated items. 🚫 No boundary was derived from the street names: a line drawn between Κατσάνου and Παπαδιαμαντοπούλου would be this project's line rather than the publisher's, and D-096 forbids presenting it as the latter. ⚠️ The municipality this sits in is small relative to the conurbation — OpenStreetMap relation/1770680, «Δήμος Θεσσαλονίκης», has a furthest corner of 7.19 km — and the anchor this corpus holds for the city actually falls in the neighbouring Δήμος Νεάπολης - Συκεών, which is recorded in the city registry rather than hidden.

Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-24
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Δ' 749/01.11.2024, Article 1 of decision 652145(1657) and its recitals 20 to 22, which name the municipal council decisions and the ministerial document establishing the unified procedure

Why there is no map here
A drawing exists and the gazette does not publish it — which is the Agia finding rather than the Alexandroupoli one, and the difference is worth stating precisely. Article 1 of ΦΕΚ Δ' 749/01.11.2024 certifies one «πρωτότυπο χρωματισμένο τοπογραφικό διάγραμμα, κλίμακας 1:500», endorsed by the Head of the Τμήμα Χωρικού Σχεδιασμού of the Region's General Directorate of Planning and Infrastructure, and says that it «συνοδεύει την απόφαση αυτή» — it accompanies the decision. 🚨 It does NOT say, as the Alexandroupoli decree of ΦΕΚ Δ' 855/30.11.2021 expressly does, that a copy is published with the act in photo-reduction. And measured on 2026-09-24, no drawing page is in the issue: scripts/read-source.mjs returns 35 986 characters from ΦΕΚ Δ' 749 and its eight pages read as continuous running text across the issue's three unrelated items, with no silent page among them. So the geometry was never put before the public in the gazette at all. ⚠️ python3 scripts/pdf-stream-prose.py scores this file `prose 0 · unmapped 12 · did-not-inflate 22`, which is NOT a verdict about the file and is not used as one (D-272): the script says so itself, and the reader reads the issue in full. 🚫 No boundary was derived from the three street names either; that line would be this project's rather than the publisher's (D-096).

The authority's own map: Περιφέρεια Κεντρικής Μακεδονίας, Γενική Διεύθυνση Προγραμματισμού και Υποδομών…

Petrol standard

This scheme sets no emission threshold, and the absence is structural rather than unrecorded. A pedestrianisation asks whether a vehicle may be on the street at all, not what comes out of its exhaust, and a town-planning amendment is further still from an emission instrument: it amends a ρυμοτομικό σχέδιο under the Basic Town Planning Code and the New Building Regulation, neither of which contains an emission criterion.

Diesel standard

The same as for petrol, and for the same structural reason. No Euro class, fuel type or registration year appears anywhere in either act. Neither act measures any property of a vehicle at all — not weight, not length, not propulsion. The only question they ask is whether a vehicle is on that stretch.

Penalty if you do not comply
€350.00 The chain turns on one word, as it does at Patras and at Alexandroupoli. The Highway Code prohibits driving «σε πλατείες, πεζόδρομους, πεζοδρόμια», and the question on every Greek pedestrianisation in this corpus is whether the local act's own word is the Code's noun «πεζόδρομος». Here it is, twice and in the operative sentence of each act: the planning act designates the stretch «ως πεζόδρομου» and the traffic act approves the exclusion «στα πλαίσια διαδικασίας καθορισμού τους ως πεζόδρομων». 🔑 The figures are read from the statute: article 20 §4 of ν. 5209/2025 forbids a driver to circulate on pedestrian streets «εκτός από περιπτώσεις απολύτου ανάγκης ή όταν ειδικές ρυθμίσεις το επιτρέπουν»; article 20 §8 β) classifies a breach of §4 «στην κατηγορία Ε3-Β και στην κατηγορία Σ»; article 108 §5 γ) γα) prices it at «διοικητικό πρόστιμο τριακοσίων πενήντα (350) ευρώ», §5 γ) γβ) adds withdrawal of the driving licence and of the vehicle's registration documents for thirty (30) days, and §5 δ) adds a further forty (40) days' withdrawal for the category Σ classification. ⚠️ For a visitor in a hire car, the measure against the vehicle's registration documents is a matter between the renter and the rental company that the Code does not address. 🚨 One honest limit, and it is the same one that runs through this record: the traffic act ties application of its regulations to the installation of signs, and this project cannot tell you what plate or bollard stands at that junction today.Source: Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο, read 2026-09-24
Full citation

Εθνικό Τυπογραφείο — Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, ΦΕΚ Α' 100/13.06.2025: ν. 5209/2025, «Κώδικας Οδικής Κυκλοφορίας». Article 2 §56 for the definition of a pedestrian street and for the abutting-property entry and exit it allows; article 20 §4 and §8 β) for driving on one and for the category it falls in; article 108 §5 γ) and δ) for the tariff and the licence measures

How to comply
  • Do not drive the stretch of οδός Ασημάκη Φωτήλα between οδός Κατσάνου and οδός Παπαδιαμαντοπούλου, in central Thessaloniki. It is a pedestrian street in the town plan and has been since 1 November 2024.
  • 🔑 The cross streets that name the ends are not closed. Οδός Κατσάνου and οδός Παπαδιαμαντοπούλου are how the acts say where the converted stretch starts and stops; they are the boundary, not the subject. Nor is the rest of οδός Ασημάκη Φωτήλα beyond them.
  • 🔑 One access right comes from the Highway Code rather than from either local act. Article 2 §56 of ν. 5209/2025 defines a pedestrian street as one used exclusively by pedestrians «και για είσοδο - έξοδο οχημάτων προς και από χώρους στάθμευσης παρόδιων ιδιοκτησιών και παρόδιων χρήσεων» — and for vehicles entering and leaving the parking of abutting properties and abutting uses. Article 20 §4 adds the general exception for cases of absolute necessity or where special regulations permit.
  • 🆕 The municipality's own pedestrian-street regulation is the instrument that says who may drive here, and this page now holds it. «ΚΑΝΟΝΙΣΜΟΣ ΛΕΙΤΟΥΡΓΙΑΣ ΠΕΖΟΔΡΟΜΩΝ ΔΗΜΟΥ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗΣ» — council decision 1712 of 19 December 2016, ratified by the Decentralised Administration on 22 February 2017 — is cited by the traffic act and is published by the municipality itself, not in the gazette. Its baseline is paragraph 3.5: passage, stopping and parking of every vehicle, «μηχανοκίνητων, τρικύκλων, δικύκλων», is forbidden on pedestrian streets and at their entrances around the clock. Everything below is an exception to that, in the regulation's own words.
  • 🔑 Round the clock, for an emergency only: ambulances and cars carrying patients, the Hellenic Police, the Municipal Police, the Fire Service, public-utility vehicles and hearses. Paragraph 4.1 admits them «κατ' εξαίρεση όλο το 24ωρο και μόνο για την αντιμετώπιση περιπτώσεων επείγουσας ανάγκης» — the emergency condition is part of the permission, not decoration.
  • 🔑 Round the clock, without the emergency condition, paragraph 4.2 admits five more: municipal refuse vehicles and other technical-service vehicles for maintenance work; a private car going to or from a parking space of an abutting property inside the pedestrianised area, to park in a space it owns or lawfully leases inside the building or on the uncovered part of the plot, and only if it carries a special municipal permit stating the permit's period of validity and the vehicle's registration number; a private car using a lawfully operating private car park whose entrance is on the pedestrian street; a private car heading to a lawfully operating car repair shop whose entrance is on the pedestrian street, provided it does not park on the street; and a passenger car carrying a disabled person who holds an «Α.Μ.Α.» parking card, to and from their permanent home inside the pedestrianised area. 🚫 Paragraph 3.5 adds that no parking space may be allocated inside a pedestrian street for disabled vehicles, cash-in-transit vehicles or other special categories — the permission is to drive to and from a home, not to park on the street.
  • 🔑 If you are moving house, pouring concrete, demolishing or building, you need a permit first and it is time-limited. Paragraph 4.4 admits removals lorries, ready-mixed concrete trucks and concrete pumps, demolition and excavation spoil, and building materials, each up to «δεκαέξι (16) τόνων» gross weight, on a special permit of limited duration issued by the municipality after an opinion of the Traffic Police Directorate, on weekdays and at weekends; each permit names its validity and the vehicle's plate. ⚠️ No such permit is valid during the statutory quiet hours — 15:30–17:30 and 22:00–07:30 in winter (1 October to 31 March), 15:00–17:30 and 23:00–07:00 in summer (1 April to 30 September) — except on pedestrian streets that have exclusively commercial or other non-residential use, where permits may be issued around the clock.
  • 🚫 Tracked vehicles and machinery are banned outright by paragraph 4.6, with no permit available, and paragraph 4.7 forbids sellers' vehicles to remain on a pedestrian street where a street market operates.
  • 🚨 If you are one of the vehicles that may enter, the conditions on how you drive are strict and they are the regulation's, not this project's. Paragraph 4.8: your speed may not exceed walking pace and pedestrians have priority in every case; reversing is forbidden unless a person on foot is guiding you; U-turns are forbidden; you may not drive or stand on lighting manholes; and your standing time is limited to the strictly necessary. Police, municipal police, fire and first-aid vehicles are exempt from those conditions in an emergency. Paragraph 4.9 makes the keeper of the vehicle liable to compensate the municipality, on the Technical Service's assessment, for any damage caused by driving or parking on a pedestrian street.
  • 🔑 If a bollard is in your way and you are entitled to pass, the municipality is meant to have given you the means. Paragraph 5.4 puts retractable bollards under a named municipal employee on 24-hour shifts, requires that employee's contact details to be given to every body whose vehicles may enter by exception, and provides that the municipality supplies «είτε το ειδικό κλειδί είτε τους κωδικούς ή τα χειριστήρια» — the special key, the codes or the remote controls — with a remote control for vehicles that have daily exceptional access, such as refuse trucks and a private car with its own parking space. 🚫 The regulation does not publish a phone number, and this project does not hold one.
  • 🔑 Read the plate at the entrance, because the regulation says one is supposed to be there and to carry more than a prohibition. Paragraph 3.3: at every entrance to a pedestrian street a special sign is placed announcing the use of the street and giving further information about how it operates, «όπως το ωράριο για τη φορτοεκφόρτωση εμπορευμάτων» — such as the goods loading hours. ⚠️ That is the regulation's instruction to the municipality, not this project's observation of this junction.
  • 🚨 Expect the ground to be the thing you actually obey. The traffic act says its regulations are applied «με την τοποθέτηση - εγκατάσταση της σχετικής κατακόρυφης - οριζόντιας σήμανσης» — on the installation of the vertical and horizontal signing — and no published act says when that happened. Read the signs at the junction.
  • 🚫 Three other central streets have been approved for the same treatment and are NOT covered here, because their own acts say the regulations are not yet in force: οδός Αγνώστου Στρατιώτη between Ολύμπου and Αγίου Δημητρίου, οδός Κορίνθου between Αιτωλικού and Παπάφη, and οδός Οδυσσιτών between Κορίνθου and Στρ. Γενναδίου. If you meet a barrier or a sign on any of them, the sign is the thing to obey — the procedure may simply have finished since this was written.
  • ⚠️ If you are delivering rather than driving through, the goods-vehicle clock for the whole municipality is a separate scheme and it does reach pedestrian streets: loading on any πεζόδρομος of Δήμος Θεσσαλονίκης is confined to lorries of up to 3.5 tonnes payload between 10:00 and 12:00, Monday to Saturday, under ΦΕΚ Β' 6645/06.12.2024. 🚨 The regulation prints an older and different set of loading bands for pedestrian streets — 06:30–08:30, or 02:30–08:30 on the exclusively commercial ones, up to 8 tonnes payload — and the 2024 decision, which is later and covers «όλους τους πεζόδρομους», does not mention the regulation at all. Take the 2024 hours: they are the later act and the narrower permission. The older bands are set out under `hours` so that a reader who meets them knows which act they came from.
  • 🚫 Nothing here says the rest of Thessaloniki is unrestricted. The municipality has had a pedestrian-street network and a regulation for it since 2016, and a 2018 gazette listed twenty-nine of those streets by name. This record holds the one conversion this project could source to both halves of the procedure that made it.
  • Nothing is payable and nothing is to be bought in advance. There is no permit, no registration and no charge attached to driving here.
Source: Δήμος Θεσσαλονίκης, read 2026-09-25
Full citation

Δήμος Θεσσαλονίκης (Municipality of Thessaloniki), Διεύθυνση Έργων Αναπλάσεων και Συντηρήσεων Δημοσίου Χώρου — «ΚΑΝΟΝΙΣΜΟΣ ΛΕΙΤΟΥΡΓΙΑΣ ΠΕΖΟΔΡΟΜΩΝ ΔΗΜΟΥ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗΣ», the regulation approved by municipal council decision 1712/19-12-2016 and ratified by document 3703/22-2-2017 of the Αποκεντρωμένη Διοίκηση Μακεδονίας - Θράκης, published by the municipality on its own «Κανονιστικές Αποφάσεις» page. Paragraph 3.5 for the baseline prohibition, 4.1 and 4.2 for the vehicle classes admitted round the clock, 4.4 for the limited-duration building and removals permit and the quiet hours, 4.6 and 4.7 for the tracked-vehicle and street-market prohibitions, 4.8 and 4.9 for the conditions on a permitted vehicle and the damage liability, 5.4 for the bollard keys and controls, and 3.3 for the sign at the entrance. 🔑 The first two steps on this list come from the gazette and the Code instead — ΦΕΚ Β' 1828/26.03.2024 for the exclusion and its conditions, ΦΕΚ Δ' 749/01.11.2024 for the designation, and ν. 5209/2025 article 2 §56 and article 20 §4 for the abutting-property access right and the general exception — and all three are cited in `sources`

Sources

Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-24.

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