Como, Italy · Limited traffic zone
In force in Como right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 11:04 · Europe/Rome
Nothing is lost here, and that is unusual enough to state. The ZTL carries no holiday exception at all: article 1 applies it from 00:00 to 24:00 of every day, and the order names no festivo, no Sunday and no seasonal break. So the absence of a dated, reusable list of Italian public holidays — the gap recorded on the Florence, Rome, Milan, Modena, Genoa and Palermo records — costs this record nothing, because there is no exclusion we would apply even if we had one. The holiday calendar does matter one level down, to the timed permit categories in article 6, several of which read "non festivi" and therefore do not run on a weekday public holiday. Those windows are properties of a permit rather than of the zone and are not encoded below, so the gap does not reach what this page tells a driver. The same caveat applies to the Regione Lombardia limits cited in the emission fields, which exclude weekday public holidays and which we state in prose rather than encode.
The first rule is the whole of the answer for most drivers, and the other two only make it stricter. Nothing in this schedule ever opens the zone; the overlays subtract permissions from it. A reader who takes away only "closed, always" has the right answer.
⚠️ The half-hour between 14:30 and 15:00 in the Duomo area is real and it is the publisher's own drafting, not a transcription slip: article 3 comma 2 sets the pedestrian closure at 10:30–14:30 and 15:00–06:00, and comma 3 names 06:00–10:30 and 14:30–15:00 as the hours in which the ZTL discipline applies there instead. We carry both windows exactly as written rather than merging them into 10:30–06:00, because the distinction decides which rules a vehicle with a ZTL permit is under.
Parking is not part of the windows above and must not be read out of them. Article 4 comma 4 prohibits parking throughout the ZTL and the pedestrian areas from 00:00 to 24:00 of every day with forced removal, and article 4 comma 5 separately prohibits standing in front of pedestrian entrances and shop windows on the same round-the-clock basis. A vehicle lawfully inside on a permit can still be towed for stopping.
The timed hours a visitor may see quoted for Como — deliveries from 06:00, commercial agents 09:00–11:00 and 14:00–16:00, cleaning firms 05:00–10:00 and 17:00–22:00 — belong to permit categories under article 6, not to the zone. They tell a permit holder when that permit is valid; they tell an unauthorised driver nothing, because the zone is closed to them at every hour. They are deliberately not encoded here.
The order is a coordinated text rather than an original, and its own attestation records the chain: the text conforms to the document signed on 13 January 2017 (ID 202521), with the parts in a different colour and typeface conforming to documents signed on 11 July 2019 (ID 240456) and 7 April 2023 (R.G. n. 103). Article 11 comma 3 revokes every earlier inconsistent measure. This is why the record rests on ordinanza 11/2017 and not on ordinanza 27/2016, which the city also still publishes and which article 11 comma 2 keeps alive only until the permit regulation comes into force.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
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.
Comune di Como, Settore Polizia Locale e Protezione Civile — ordinanza dirigenziale n. 11 of 13 January 2017, "Disciplina della circolazione stradale nelle Aree Pedonali Urbane (APU) 'Alessandro Volta' e 'Duomo' e nella zone a traffico limitato (ZTL) 'Città Murata'", published as the coordinated text that carries its own later amendments (ordinanza n. 248 of 11 July 2019 and ordinanza n. 105 of 7 April 2023). This is the instrument itself, not a summary of it
Como sells no day ticket for this zone, and that is a measured absence rather than a gap in the search. Entry is by permit category, not by payment: the city's service record lists twenty-four categories — resident, holder of a private parking space, commercial agent, delivery driver, doctor, hotel customer, building trade, undertaker and so on — and every one of them is a status you either have or do not.
There is no "visitor" tariff of the kind Palermo sells to anybody for €5.00. What the city does publish is the cost of applying, and it is an administrative fee rather than a charge for driving: a €16 duty stamp (marca da bollo), paid digitally during the online application, plus a processing fee that "varies according to the category of need, from a minimum of €5 to a maximum of €20".
Nothing is charged to a person with a disability or an invalid. Both of those are the price of the paperwork for someone entitled to a permit — not a gate a traveller can pay at.
Two routes in do exist for a visitor and neither carries a published price: the after-the-fact authorisation for customers of accommodation inside the zone, which the property arranges by notifying your registration to the Polizia Locale, and the "Arena" car park, which may be driven to when the panel at the ZTL entrance shows spaces.
We hold no figure for either because the publisher states none, and we do not infer that free means free of every cost.
Round the clock, every day, all year. Article 1 of the order states it without qualification: in the ZTL "Città Murata", from 00:00 to 24:00 on every day, the circulation — transit and parking alike — of all motor vehicles is prohibited except as provided in Chapter II. The city's own service page says the same in plainer words, that a limitation on city traffic applies over the whole of this area throughout the year.
There is no seasonal switch of the kind Palermo runs, no weekday/weekend split of the kind Florence runs, and no evening opening. A driver arriving at 02:00 on a Sunday in February is inside the restriction exactly as much as one arriving at midday on a Wednesday in August. Two stricter overlays sit inside the same ground and both have their own clock.
The pedestrian area "Alessandro Volta" is closed to all motor vehicles from 00:00 to 24:00 of every day, and the order says expressly that this includes holders of the disabled badge under art. 381 of d.p.r. 495/92 — so the exemption that works in the ZTL does not work there.
The pedestrian area "Duomo" is closed on the same terms from 10:30 to 14:30 and from 15:00 to 06:00 of every day; between 06:00 and 10:30 and between 14:30 and 15:00 the ordinary ZTL rules apply there instead, which still means closed unless you hold a permit. ⚠️ What varies by the hour in Como is not whether the zone is shut but which permit gets you through it: the timed categories in article 6 each have their own window (deliveries from 06:00, commercial agents 09:00–11:00 and 14:00–16:00, building trade 07:00–18:00, and so on), and those windows are properties of the permit, not of the zone.
Comune di Como, Settore Polizia Locale e Protezione Civile — ordinanza dirigenziale n. 11 of 13 January 2017, articles 1, 2 and 3: the ZTL's own 00:00–24:00 statement, the round-the-clock pedestrian area "Alessandro Volta" including the disabled-badge exclusion, and the "Duomo" area's two daily windows with the hours in which the ZTL regime resumes
The whole of the walled town and a ring of streets beyond it. The city describes the zone as covering all of the "Città murata", the piazza Roma/piazza Verdi block — via Rodari, piazza Roma, via Bianchi Giovini, Caio Plinio II, piazza Grimoldi, via Macchi, via Pretorio — and piazza Volta, via Grassi and via Garibaldi.
The order adds that the market area of the Mercato Mercerie, running along the outside of the walls on via Cattaneo, piazza Vittoria, Largo Spallino and via Battisti, is an integral part of the same ZTL.
Unlike most of the Italian zones in this corpus, Como publishes the perimeter street by street: a one-page list, "Elenco delle vie inserite nella Zona a Traffico Limitato", names 63 streets and squares from via Adamo del Pero to via Volta. The camera gates are published too, and knowing them is the practical form of knowing the boundary.
Seven gates read plates on the way in — via Cinque Giornate, via Diaz, via Carducci, via Indipendenza, via Rodari, via Grassi, via Cairoli — and five on the way out: via dell'Annunciata, via Indipendenza, via Rodari, via Cairoli, via Garibaldi. Note that via Indipendenza, via Rodari and via Cairoli appear on both lists, so they are two-way gates rather than one-way exits.
Inside the ZTL sit four pedestrian areas with tighter rules: "Alessandro Volta" (piazza Volta, piazza Cavour, piazza Grimoldi, via Pretorio, piazza Verdi, via Maestri Comacini, via Vittorio Emanuele, via Porta, via Cinque Giornate, via Bellini — the green colour on the city's plan), "Duomo" (via Plinio, piazza Duomo and via Vittorio Emanuele II — the blue colour), "Perretta" in front of the former Banca d'Italia building, and "Juvara". ⚠️ The zone is the historic core of a lakeside town, which is exactly where a visitor wants to be: the Duomo, the Broletto, piazza Cavour on the waterfront and the Volta museum quarter are all inside it.
The funicular to Brunate and the Villa Olmo are not.
Comune di Como — service record "Accesso alla ZTL (Zona a Traffico Limitato)", the city's own description of what the zone covers and the only page that publishes the camera gates as two lists, entry and exit; read together with the published street list and with article 1 of the order for the Mercato Mercerie
The authority's own map: Comune di Como, Settore Polizia Locale e Protezione Civile
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.
Comune di Como — ordinanza dirigenziale n. 11 of 13 January 2017, article 4 comma 6, which is where the ZTL adopts the regional air-quality rules; read together with Regione Lombardia's own standing page on the permanent measures for the classes and the band structure
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.
Regione Lombardia — "Misure permanenti per migliorare la qualità dell'aria", the region's standing page for the year-round circulation limits: which Euro classes are barred, in which Fascia, the weekday 07:30–19:30 window, and the five named Fascia 2 municipalities over 30 000 inhabitants to which the Euro 4 diesel ban additionally extends; read together with the region's own published list of comuni by band, which puts Como in Fascia 1
Como publishes no figure, and the order says why: article 10 provides that violations of it are dealt with under the provisions of the Codice della Strada in force. That is a referral to national law rather than a municipal tariff, and it is the third time in this corpus that the referral is the whole of what a city states — Genoa and Palermo land in the same place.
The amounts are therefore the national ones for entering a restricted zone under art. 7 of d.lgs. 285/1992, and art.
195 of that same code recalculates them every two years, which is exactly why we do not carry a number forward from another city or from an older page. What is worth knowing is the structure rather than the sum. The offence is national, so it does not vary between Italian cities.
Driving in without authorisation and parking inside during the restricted hours are separate offences, and in Como the second one is always live because parking is prohibited from 00:00 to 24:00 with towing. Enforcement is by the Polizia Locale, including electronic reading of the gates, so a transit is recorded whether or not anyone is present.
And the order adds a second, non-Codice layer: article 11 provides that the municipal regulation governing the issue of permits also governs abuse of a permit, with the penalties available under art. 7-bis of d.lgs. 267/2000 — so misusing a permit and having none are not the same offence.
We hold no figure for either, and we do not estimate one: the amount exists and is national, we simply have not read a current statement of it.
Comune di Como, Settore Polizia Locale e Protezione Civile — ordinanza dirigenziale n. 11 of 13 January 2017, coordinated text: article 4 for the size limit, the 10 km/h limit and the parking prohibition, article 5 for the disabled badge and the coach route, article 7 for the accommodation customers' after-the-fact authorisation with its 45 minutes and its private-parking clause and for the 48-hour badge route, and article 9 for the motorcycles and for the "Arena" car park; read together with the city's service record for the application route and the fees
Comune di Como, Settore Polizia Locale e Protezione Civile — ordinanza dirigenziale n. 11 of 13 January 2017, "Disciplina della circolazione stradale nelle Aree Pedonali Urbane (APU) 'Alessandro Volta' e 'Duomo' e nella zone a traffico limitato (ZTL) 'Città Murata'", published as a coordinated text carrying its own amendments by ordinanza n. 248 of 11 July 2019 and ordinanza n. 105 of 7 April 2023. The governing instrument and the source of almost every fact on this page: the round-the-clock closure, the two pedestrian areas and their clocks, the 3.5 t and 7.00 m limits, the 10 km/h limit, the round-the-clock parking ban with towing, the twenty-odd permit categories with their windows, the after-the-fact authorisations including the one for customers of accommodation inside the zone, the motorcycle rule, the "Arena" car park, and the referral of penalties to the Codice della Strada
Comune di Como — "Disciplina della circolazione stradale nelle Aree Pedonali Urbane (APU) 'Alessandro Volta' e 'Duomo' e nelle zone a traffico limitato (ZTL) 'Città Murata'", the city's own document-and-data record that publishes the order and names it by number. Filed under "Atto normativo", responsible office Polizia Locale, licensed "Licenza aperta". This is the page that says which instrument is the current one, and it is watched for that reason rather than for any fact it states
Comune di Como — service record "Accesso alla ZTL (Zona a Traffico Limitato)", the city's own public-facing page for the scheme, last updated 25 July 2025. The only place that publishes the camera gates as two named lists, entry and exit; also the description of what the zone covers, the four pedestrian areas by name and colour, the full list of permit categories, the requirement that applications be made online with SPID or CIE only, and the fee structure
Comune di Como, Polizia Locale — "Elenco delle vie inserite nella Zona a Traffico Limitato", the published street-by-street list of what is inside the zone, linked from the service record. Sixty-three streets and squares in alphabetical order, from via Adamo del Pero to via Volta, and the nearest thing Como offers to a boundary in words rather than in a drawing
Comune di Como, Polizia Locale, U.O.C.S.S.I. Unità Specialistica Circolazione Stradale — "Permessi, orari, ingresso, tempi sosta e limitazioni", the operational table that sets out, category by category, which article of the order authorises it, the hours it may enter, how long it may stand and on which days. The source for the statement that the residents-with-a-parking-space category is marked SOSTA VIETATA and for the range of stopping times attached to the others
Comune di Como — "Modifica ed integrazione dell'Ordinanza n. 11 del 13/01/2017 … adibiti a noleggio con conducente (c.d. 'bus turistici')", the document-and-data record for ordinanza dirigenziale n. 105 of 7 April 2023, last updated 4 October 2024. The published proof that the coordinated text this record relies on is amended up to 2023 and not older, and the source of the coach route through the ZTL for hotel customers
Regione Lombardia — "Misure permanenti per migliorare la qualità dell'aria", the region's standing page for the year-round vehicle-circulation limits that article 4 comma 6 of Como's order incorporates by reference: which Euro classes are barred in which Fascia, the weekday 07:30–19:30 window, the five named Fascia 2 municipalities over 30 000 inhabitants to which the Euro 4 diesel ban extends, the Euro 5 diesel phase-in — confined to municipalities over 100 000 inhabitants, never reaching Como, and postponed from 1 October 2026 to 1 October 2027 by d.G.R. XII/6846 del 28/09/2026 — and the per-municipality derogation maps, Como among them
Regione Lombardia — "Elenco Comuni Fascia 1 e Fascia 2", annex 2 to d.G.R. n. 2578 of 31 October 2014, published on the region's air-quality zoning page (last updated 16 July 2026) as the current list of which municipality sits in which band. The document that decides the diesel answer for Como: it lists COMO under province code CO inside ELENCO COMUNI FASCIA 1, the 209-municipality band defined as the Milan, Bergamo and Brescia agglomerations plus the Pavia, Lodi, Cremona and Mantua provincial capitals and their belt municipalities, against 361 municipalities in Fascia 2 and the rest of the region in Fascia 3
Comune di Como, Settore Polizia Locale e Protezione Civile — Allegato A to ordinanza 11/2017, the plan that draws the zone: the ZTL in red, the "Alessandro Volta" pedestrian area in green and the "Duomo" one in blue, captioned as deriving from deliberazioni della Giunta Comunale n. 209 of 26 June 2013 and n. 24 of 29 January 2014. Cited because the order makes it an integral part of the instrument and because it is the only map Como publishes, and it is the reason this record's boundary coverage is published_unusable rather than not_published
Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-21.