Italy: 6 schemes to know about before you drive in.
Genoa has 6 driving restrictions on our books: the Limitazione alla circolazione per motivi ambientali (low emission zone), the Zona a Traffico Limitato telecontrollata "Boccadasse" (limited traffic zone), the Zona a Traffico Limitato Centro Storico (limited traffic zone), the Zona a Traffico Limitato telecontrollata "Molo" (limited traffic zone), the Zona a Traffico Limitato telecontrollata "Nervi" (Gazzolo) (limited traffic zone) and the Zona a Traffico Limitato "Nervi Centro" (Oberdan) (limited traffic zone). What is a low emission zone?
Sources last read on 2026-09-22, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-21.
Genoa runs a low-emission restriction over two areas at once, and the wider of the two is the entire municipality.
From Monday to Friday between 07:00 and 19:00, a diesel car of Euro 2 or below may not circulate anywhere in the comune, and inside AREA 1 — a ring drawn street by street from Piazza Dinegro round to Via Venezia, taking in the old town, the waterfront, Foce, Albaro, San Martino, Marassi and the lower Val Bisagno — the diesel line rises to Euro 4. Petrol cars are caught at Euro 1 in both areas.
There is no ticket, no charge and no permit on sale: the only way through is one of the twenty-five exemptions the mayor's order lists, and one of them is written for exactly our reader — a vehicle whose owner lives outside Liguria or abroad and holds a hotel booking in Genoa is excluded, for the arrival and the departure journey. The order in force is Ordinanza della Sindaca n.
256 of 05/08/2025, which revoked and replaced n. 206 of 01/07/2025 six weeks after it; both descend from Ordinanza Sindacale n. 59/2023, the act the city's ZTL rulebook names when it excludes this scheme from its own scope.
Boccadasse is the old fishing village inside Genoa — a handful of lanes dropping to a pebble cove at Piazza Nettuno — and the lanes are closed to unauthorised vehicles every day of the year through the whole 24 hours. There is no hour at which it opens. One camera watches it, in Via Boccadasse, and the operator states that every Genoese gate is live all days 0–24 including public holidays.
The camera reads plates remotely with nobody on the spot, so an unauthorised entry is not stopped at the gate: it is recorded and dealt with afterwards by post. Boccadasse is not a place to drive to.
It is small, it is steep, the zone has no public parking of its own inside it, and the only day permit the scheme sells here — €11.00, category BOC_01 — is written for two purposes that are not a visit: maintaining or laying up a boat at Piazza Bassano, and carrying bulky gear for the boatyards.
A visitor staying inside the zone gets in a different way and pays nothing for it: the accommodation holds an annual authorisation for its guests' cars and reports your plate to the operator within 48 hours of the entry.
Electric vehicles are free everywhere in the city on a free annual pass, and bicycles need nothing. ⚠️ One warning a driver cannot get from a map: the operator's boundary page and the rulebook it links do not list the same streets.
Two streets swap sides between them, one is named from a different junction and one loses its house numbers, so the safe reading is the wider one — treat every street either document names as inside, and see the area field for exactly which four disagree.
Genoa's historic centre is closed to unauthorised vehicles every day of the year and around the whole 24 hours — the operator says so in one sentence, and there is no hour at which it opens.
The zone is not one shape but five numbered sectors, and eleven camera gates let a plate into one named sector only: Via di Porta Soprana, Via del Campo, Vico Giannini and Piazza della Raibetta for Sector 1, Via San Giorgio, Vico delle Camelie, Mura delle Grazie and Via Ravasco for Sector 2, Via Lomellini for Sector 3, Via Cairoli for Sector 4 and Via Garibaldi for Sector 5.
The cameras work remotely with no officer present, so an unauthorised entry is not stopped at the gate — it is recorded and dealt with afterwards. No authorisation is issued at all to a vehicle over 3.5 tonnes laden or wider than 2.10 metres.
For a visitor arriving by car there is one opening that works and it costs the visitor nothing: a hotel, guesthouse or other accommodation buys an annual authorisation for its guests and reports your plate to the operator by e-mail within 48 hours of your entry. There is nothing to buy at the gate and no day ticket a tourist can hold — every daily permit the rulebook prices belongs to a named trade.
Electric cars are the other free way in, with a free annual windscreen pass valid in every Genoese ZTL, and bicycles need nothing anywhere. ⚠️ Two warnings that a driver cannot guess. Via Cairoli is inside Sector 4, and between 11:30 and 19:00 the ZTL there stops and a pedestrian area takes over with a shorter list of who may drive — a ZTL permit is not a permit for it.
And Genoa runs a second, separate scheme against the most polluting vehicles under Ordinanza Sindacale 59/2023, which this rulebook expressly excludes from its own scope and says works alongside it; being clear of the ZTL says nothing about that one.
Molo is the seaward edge of Genoa's old town — Via del Molo and the lanes around Piazza San Marco, between the Porta del Molo and Piazza Cavour — and it is closed to unauthorised vehicles every day of the year through the whole 24 hours. There is no hour at which it opens. One camera watches it, in Via del Molo, and the operator states that every Genoese gate is live all days 0–24 including public holidays.
The camera reads plates remotely with nobody on the spot, so an unauthorised entry is not stopped at the gate: it is recorded, and dealt with afterwards by post. Two limits keep a vehicle out whatever its paperwork says, and Molo is one of only two Genoese zones where the operator publishes both: access is for vehicles of not more than 3.5 tonnes laden and not more than 2.10 metres wide.
For a visitor there is one opening and it costs the visitor nothing — a hotel, guesthouse or B&B inside the zone holds an annual authorisation for its guests' cars and reports your plate to the operator within 48 hours of your entry. You buy nothing and display nothing; you hand the property your registration number before you drive in.
Electric vehicles are the other free way in, on a free annual windscreen pass good for every ZTL in the city, and bicycles need nothing anywhere. ⚠️ Molo is not the Centro Storico ZTL. They touch along Piazza Cavour, they are governed by the same rulebook, and a permit is issued for one zone or sector at a time — the old-town permit is not a Molo permit.
And Genoa's emissions scheme under Ordinanza Sindacale 256/2025 covers the whole comune on separate terms that this record does not hold.
This is the harbour end of Nervi — Via Gazzolo dropping to Via Caboto and Via Ganduccio by the little port, where the seafront walk begins — and it is closed to unauthorised vehicles every day of the year through the whole 24 hours. There is no hour at which it opens. One camera watches it, in Via Felice Gazzolo, and the operator states that every Genoese gate is live all days 0–24 including public holidays.
The camera reads plates remotely with nobody on the spot, so an unauthorised entry is not stopped at the gate: it is recorded and dealt with afterwards by post. Inside the zone there is a tighter thing still — the area of the porticciolo, the little harbour itself, is excluded from the ZTL because an outright transit ban applies there instead, so a ZTL permit is not an answer for it.
Nervi sells a permit by the day, €11.00, and it is not a visitor's ticket: it belongs to canoe and rowing clubs based in the zone carrying their boats, to the concessionaires of the maritime state land, and to boat owners reaching the public slipway.
A visitor staying inside the zone gets in a different way and pays nothing: the accommodation holds an annual authorisation for its guests' cars and reports your plate to the operator within 48 hours of the entry. Electric vehicles are free everywhere in the city on a free annual pass, and bicycles need nothing. ⚠️ Nervi has two separate ZTLs, and this is the one by the harbour.
The other, "Nervi Centro" in Via Oberdan, runs on a shorter list of who may enter — and that list has no place for a hotel guest at all.
Nervi Centro is one street — Via Guglielmo Oberdan between Piazza Antonio Pittaluga and Viale Goffredo Franchini, the main street of Nervi village — and it is closed to unauthorised vehicles every day of the year through the whole 24 hours. There is no hour at which it opens. One camera watches it, in Via Oberdan, and the operator states that every Genoese gate is live all days 0–24 including public holidays.
The camera reads plates remotely with nobody on the spot, so an unauthorised entry is not stopped at the gate: it is recorded and dealt with afterwards by post. 🚨 This is the strictest of Genoa's nine ZTLs for a visitor, and the reason is not the hours but the list of who may enter.
Every other Genoese zone inherits the rulebook's full set of categories; Nervi Centro is written the other way round, as a named subset — emergency and police, public transport, disabled-badge vehicles, liveried public-service vehicles on operational work, a narrow slice of unliveried contractor vehicles, electric vehicles, residents, and holders of a private parking space with a regular vehicle crossing.
The category that admits guests of hotels and B&Bs everywhere else in Genoa, AUT_09, is not in the list. So the answer a visitor most wants — "my hotel will put my plate on the list" — is no here, unless the property has its own off-street parking inside the zone. Goods vehicles get the one clock-based opening: delivery or distribution between 08:00 and 13:00.
Electric vehicles are free, and bicycles need nothing anywhere. ⚠️ Nervi has a second ZTL, at the harbour end in Via Gazzolo, and it is not this one.