Driving in Como

Italy: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.

The short answer for Como

Como has one driving restriction on our books: the Zona a Traffico Limitato "Città Murata" (limited traffic zone). What is a limited traffic zone?

What it means for your car

Petrol or LPG. This zone sets no Euro threshold of its own, and it does not need one: entry is decided by permit, not by how clean the car is, and a Euro 6 petrol car without a permit is refused exactly as a Euro 1 one is. What the order does instead is incorporate someone else's rule by reference. Article 4 comma 6 states that circulation in the ZTL and in the pedestrian areas is prohibited to all types of vehicle with an internal combustion engine that conflict with the rules issued by Regione Lombardia on air pollution — so the regional ban applies inside the zone on top of the permit requirement, and a permit holder whose car is banned regionally is still banned here. The regional rule, for petrol, is a floor rather than a ladder: Regione Lombardia's permanent measures bar petrol, methane and LPG vehicles of classes Euro 0 and Euro 1 from circulating all year, and they apply across both of the region's Fascia 1 and Fascia 2 bands, Monday to Friday excluding weekday public holidays, 07:30 to 19:30. Como is a Fascia 1 municipality — the region's published list of the 209 Fascia 1 comuni names COMO under province code CO — so the measures apply to it in their strictest form. For a petrol car that changes nothing, because the Euro 0/1 ban is the same in both bands: a petrol car of Euro 2 or better meets the regional condition, in Como as in the rest of the built-up Lombardy plain. For a diesel it changes a great deal, and the diesel field sets that out. Note that this restriction is regional and territorial rather than a feature of the ZTL: it applies to the urban area of the municipality, so it is still in force on the streets around the walls where the ZTL itself is not.
Diesel. The same structure as for petrol — the ZTL itself sets no diesel threshold and refuses every car without a permit regardless of class, while article 4 comma 6 imports Regione Lombardia's air-pollution rules on top — but the regional floor for diesel is four classes higher, and for Como it is one class higher again. Regione Lombardia bars diesel vehicles from Euro 0 to Euro 3 inclusive, all year, in both Fascia 1 and Fascia 2 municipalities, Monday to Friday excluding weekday public holidays, 07:30 to 19:30. It then bars Euro 4 diesel as well, all year, but only in Fascia 1 municipalities and in the Fascia 2 municipalities over 30 000 inhabitants, which the region now names as four — Varese, Lecco, Vigevano and Abbiategrasso (⚠️ this list read five until 28 September 2026, when S. Giuliano Milanese was dropped from it). Como is not one of them, so the question is which band it is in — and the region publishes the answer: its list of comuni by band, annex 2 to d.G.R. n. 2578 of 31 October 2014 and still the current list on the region's zoning page, names COMO under province code CO in the ELENCO COMUNI FASCIA 1, the 209-municipality band described as the Milan, Bergamo and Brescia agglomerations plus the Pavia, Lodi, Cremona and Mantua provincial capitals and their belt municipalities. So in Como the diesel floor is Euro 5: a diesel of Euro 4 or worse may not circulate in the urban area, weekdays 07:30–19:30, all year, whether or not it holds a ZTL permit and whether or not it is anywhere near the walls. The separate Euro 5 diesel phase-in never reached Como, and as of 28 September 2026 it does not reach anywhere: the 2025 decision confined it to municipalities over 100 000 inhabitants — Milan, Brescia, Monza and Bergamo — and would have started it on 1 October 2026, and the region has now postponed it to 1 October 2027 by d.G.R. XII/6846, implementing decreto-legge 28 settembre 2026, n. 167. The Allegato 1 that replaced the 2025 one stops at Euro 4/IV diesel and carries no 100 000-inhabitant clause at all. ⚠️ Either way the answer for Como is the same, which is why this field said so before the postponement too. ⚠️ A driver approaching Lake Como in an older diesel should read this field before the ZTL one. The ZTL is the walled centre and can be driven round; this applies to the urban area of the whole municipality, and it is in force whether or not you ever go near the walls.

Sources last read on 2026-09-29, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-21.

The schemes, one by one

• Zona a Traffico Limitato "Città Murata" Limited traffic zone

  Como's restricted zone has no timetable, and that is the fact a visitor to Lake Como most needs. Inside the medieval walls — the "Città Murata", plus the piazza Roma/piazza Verdi streets and piazza Volta, via Grassi and via Garibaldi — the city's own order bans the circulation and the parking of every motor vehicle from 00:00 to 24:00, every day of the year, unless the vehicle holds a permit.

  There is no evening in which the gates open and no Sunday on which they relax. Seven camera gates read plates on the way in (via Cinque Giornate, via Diaz, via Carducci, via Indipendenza, via Rodari, via Grassi and via Cairoli) and five on the way out. Two things soften that for a traveller, and both are written into the order rather than inferred.

  If you are staying in accommodation inside the zone, give the property your registration: it notifies the Polizia Locale and you get an after-the-fact authorisation good for one entry on your check-in day and one on your check-out day, each for at most 45 minutes, purely to load and unload — and if the property has its own parking spaces, the access runs for the whole stay, limited to the spaces it actually has.

  And a vehicle heading for the "Arena" car park may enter when the panel at the ZTL entrance shows space inside. Everything else is a permit category applied for online with an Italian SPID or CIE digital identity, so it is not a visitor route.

  Three further rules catch people out: parking inside is prohibited round the clock with towing, even for most permit holders; nothing over 3.5 tonnes laden or over 7.00 m long may enter at all without a separate authorisation; and the speed limit inside is 10 km/h. ⚠️ Inside the ZTL there are also two pedestrian areas that are stricter still.

  The "Alessandro Volta" area — piazza Volta, piazza Cavour, piazza Grimoldi, via Pretorio, piazza Verdi, via Maestri Comacini, via Vittorio Emanuele, via Porta, via Cinque Giornate, via Bellini — is closed to all motor vehicles 24 hours a day including holders of the disabled badge, and the "Duomo" area is closed the same way from 10:30 to 14:30 and from 15:00 to 06:00. ⚠️ And one restriction here is bigger than the ZTL: Como is a Fascia 1 municipality under Regione Lombardia's permanent air-quality measures, so a diesel of Euro 4 or older may not circulate anywhere in the city's urban area on a weekday between 07:30 and 19:30, walls or no walls.

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• Fidenzaabout 129 km away, 1 verified scheme

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