Driving in Genoa: Low emission zone

Genoa, Italy · Low emission zone

Official name Limitazione alla circolazione per motivi ambientali

In force in Genoa right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 11:05 · Europe/Rome

  • In force AREA 2, the whole municipality: petrol cars (M1) up to Euro 1, diesel cars (M1) up to Euro 2, mopeds and motorcycles up to Euro 0, two-stroke mopeds and motorcycles up to Euro 1. AREA 1, the inner ring: petrol cars and petrol vans (N1) up to Euro 1, diesel cars and diesel vans (N1) up to Euro 4, mopeds and motorcycles up to Euro 1, two-stroke up to Euro 2

Lifts Tuesday, 13 October 2026 at 19:00 local time.

Genoa's order applies on working days, Monday to Friday — "giorni feriali", which in Italy excludes public holidays. We have found no official, dated and reusable list of the public holidays currently in force in Italy, so we cannot apply that exclusion. On an Italian public holiday falling Monday to Friday this page will say the restriction is in force when the city says it is not. Saturdays and Sundays are handled correctly, because the order names the weekdays itself rather than leaving "feriali" to do that work.

One timetable, two areas, two different vehicle lists. The hours are identical for AREA 1 and AREA 2, so a single rule encodes them — but a verdict of "in force" does not tell you whether your vehicle is caught, because that depends on which area you are in as well as what you drive. A Euro 3 diesel car is legal in AREA 2 and illegal in AREA 1 at the same minute.

AREA 2 is the whole comune di Genova, so there is no threshold to cross and no gate to notice. A driver who never approaches the old town is still inside the outer area for the whole of their stay.

⚠️ The bans begin on 06/08/2025, not on the date the city's own page gives. The order is signed 05/08/2025 and its ORDINA section opens the circulation bans with "a partire dal 06/08/2025"; the city's scheme page says "Il 5 Agosto 2025 entra in vigore la nuova Ordinanza". We take the act's own date for the bans and record the page's, rather than quietly picking one.

The engine-off duties for buses at termini and for goods vehicles loading or unloading are not in this timetable, because they are not tied to the clock: the order imposes them over the whole municipality without an hour attached.

Enforcement of a breach is by the Polizia Locale under the Highway Code, and the order names no camera network of its own. Genoa's ZTL is camera-enforced remotely; this scheme is not stated to be, and we do not assume it is.

Regione Liguria's plan update (atto 67/2025) foresaw a second, stricter step from 01/10/2025 if the nitrogen-dioxide limit kept being exceeded, and the order recites that. No such further order is published on the city's scheme page as read on 2026-09-22 — the page still carries 256/2025 as the one in force — so this record holds the measures that are published, not the ones that were foreseen.

Genoa runs a separate Zona a Traffico Limitato in the old town on its own terms, and holding this record's answer does not answer that one. The ZTL rulebook excludes this scheme's areas from its own scope and says the two act autonomously and alongside each other.

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

What applies

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.

Source: Comune di Genova, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Genova — "Limitazione alla circolazione per motivi ambientali", the city's own standing page for the scheme, under Tutti gli argomenti / Ambiente / Aria. It is the page that names the order in force, says when it entered into force, says what it replaced, and carries the attachments

Daily charge

Nothing is charged and nothing is on sale. The order bans the listed classes from circulating in the two areas during the hours, and then lists twenty-five categories of vehicle and journey that are excluded from the ban; there is no day ticket, no entry fee, no registration and no payable derogation that a driver of a banned vehicle could buy on arrival.

Genoa's ZTL, a separate scheme with a separate boundary, does sell permits — but a ZTL permit is not an answer to this restriction, and this restriction is not an answer to the ZTL.

The only thing the order puts a value on runs the other way: it directs the Direzione Mobilità e Trasporti to make public transport free for five years for anyone who scraps a vehicle caught by the ordinance without buying a replacement, which is an incentive for residents and nothing a visitor can use.

When it operates

07:00 to 19:00, on working days from Monday to Friday — "nella fascia oraria dalle 07.00 alle 19.00 di tutti i giorni feriali dal lunedì al venerdì". The same window governs both areas. Outside it, and on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, the circulation ban does not apply.

Two duties in the order are not tied to the clock at all and run over the whole municipality at every hour: bus engines must be switched off while standing at termini, and goods-vehicle engines must be switched off while loading and unloading.

Source: Comune di Genova, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Genova — Ordinanza della Sindaca, ATTO N. ORD 256 del 05/08/2025, Direzione Ambiente, the ORDINA section. Signed by the mayor, Silvia Salis

Area covered

Two areas, nested. AREA 2 is the whole comune di Genova — "corrispondente a tutto il territorio comunale" — which is why the outer ring of this scheme needs no map: if you are in Genoa, you are in it.

AREA 1 is a single closed perimeter with through-routes, described in the order's Allegato 1 street by street: Piazza Dinegro (excluded) – Via Bruno Buozzi (excluded) – Via San Benedetto (excluded) – Piazza del Principe (excluded) – Via Fanti d'Italia – Via Adua – Via Alpini d'Italia – Via Antonio Gramsci – Piazza Caricamento – Via della Mercanzia – Piazza Cavour (excluded) – Corso Maurizio Quadrio – Corso Aurelio Saffi – Via dei Pescatori (excluded) – Via delle Brigate Partigiane – Rotonda 9 novembre 1989 (excluded) – Corso Guglielmo Marconi (excluded) – Via Giuseppe Casaregis – Corso Buenos Aires – Piazza Tommaseo – Via Francesco Pozzo – Via Francesco Dassori (excluded) – Corso Aldo Gastaldi – Via San Martino – Via Angelo Scribanti (excluded) – Via Francesco Mosso – Corso Europa – Via Antonio Pastore – Largo Rosanna Benzi – Viale Benedetto Quindicesimo – Via Antonio de Toni – Via Giambattista Marsano – Via Donghi – Via Giovanni Torti (excluded) – Piazza Terralba (excluded) – Via Filippo Casoni (excluded) – Piazza Giovanni Martinez (excluded) – Via Pietro Toselli (excluded) – Via Michele Novaro (excluded) – Via Carlo Varese (excluded) – Via Aurelio Nicolodi (excluded) – Corso Galliera (excluded) – Piazza Carloforte (excluded) – Via del Piano (excluded) – Via Francesco Calì – Via Jean Monnet – Via Bobbio – Via Angeli del fango – Piazzale Marassi (excluded) – Via Rino Mandoli (excluded) – Piazzale Parenzo (excluded) – Ponte Federico Campanella (excluded) – Via Leonardo Montaldo (excluded) – Largo Gaetano Giardino (excluded) – Via alla stazione per Casella (excluded) – Piazza dello Zerbino (excluded) – Passo dello Zerbino (excluded) – Via Bartolomeo Arecco (excluded) – Piazza Manin (excluded) – Corso Carlo Armellini (excluded) – Corso Solferino (excluded) – Corso Magenta (excluded) – Corso Paganini (excluded) – Piazza Goffredo Villa (excluded) – Corso Firenze (excluded) – Corso Dogali (excluded) – Corso Ugo Bassi (excluded) – Via Ambrogio Spinola (excluded) – Via Napoli (excluded) – Ponte Don Acciai (excluded) – Via Bari (excluded) – Largo S.

Francesco da Paola (excluded) – Via Bologna (excluded) – Via Venezia (excluded).

Everything inside that line belongs to AREA 1, and the publisher states the two rules that a list of street names cannot state on its own: a named stretch is inside the boundary unless the text says otherwise, and three streets — Via Terralba, Via Giulio Barrili and Via Giovanni Torti — are through-routes across the area rather than part of it.

Source: Comune di Genova, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Genova — "ELENCO VIE PERIMETRO AREA 1", the perimeter annex the city publishes beside the order on its own scheme page. The same text is Allegato 1 inside ORD 256/2025 itself, on page 10 of 11; this standalone copy is the readable one

Why there is no map here
Genoa publishes the AREA 1 perimeter in three forms and none of them yields geometry we can take. The first is the street list, which is authoritative and is what this record's area field uses — but a sequence of street names is a description, not a polygon, and turning one into the other means asserting the answer we would be trying to check. The second is "MAPPA AREA 1", the drawing linked beside the order and carried as Allegato 2 inside it: 1 161 867 bytes, one content stream, 371 characters of text, all of it the title block and the scale bar ("Scala 1:15.000", "Direzione Mobilità e Trasporti", "AREA LIMITAZIONE CIRCOLAZIONE"). It is a raster drawing of the city with the ring drawn on it, the same shape Siena's ZTL map took (6 690 413 bytes, 0 content streams), and nothing vector sits underneath. The third is the city's GeoPortale, which the scheme page links as "la planimetria più dettagliata presente sul geoportale" at mappe.comune.genova.it/MapStore2/#/viewer/962 — and that host's robots.txt answers HTTP 403, which under RFC 9309 is a complete disallow, so we do not fetch it at all. Three published forms, three different reasons, and the visitor-facing consequence is the same: AREA 2 needs no boundary because it is the municipality, and AREA 1 is given to the reader street by street instead. ⚠️ This is a different reason from the one on Genoa's ZTL record (D-249), which is staleness — the ZTL polygons are downloadable and well-licensed and simply describe a 2018 scheme. Do not merge the two: a stale dataset heals when the publisher republishes, a raster heals when the publisher exports vector, and a robots disallow heals when the publisher fixes its configuration.

The authority's own map: Comune di Genova — Direzione Mobilità e Trasporti

Petrol standard

Euro 1 and below, in both areas, for private cars — "autoveicoli privati alimentati a benzina M1 di categoria emissiva inferiore o uguale a Euro 1" is the line for AREA 1 and the identical line for AREA 2. Petrol light commercial vehicles (N1) of Euro 1 and below are banned in AREA 1 only; the AREA 2 list does not carry them.

Mopeds and motorcycles are handled by their own lines and not by fuel: in AREA 1 they are banned up to and including Euro 1, and two-stroke thermal-engine mopeds and motorcycles up to and including Euro 2; in AREA 2 the same two lines fall to Euro 0 and Euro 1 respectively.

Vehicles running on methane, LPG or as hybrids — including dual-fuel conversions — are excluded from the ban outright, as are electric and zero-emission vehicles.

Source: Comune di Genova, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Genova — Ordinanza della Sindaca, ATTO N. ORD 256 del 05/08/2025, the ORDINA section, the AREA 1 and AREA 2 vehicle lists and exclusions 1 and 2

Diesel standard

This is the line that catches visitors, and it is two different lines depending on where you are. Anywhere in the comune (AREA 2): diesel cars of Euro 2 and below — "autoveicoli privati ad alimentazione a gasolio M1 di categoria emissiva inferiore o uguale a Euro 2". Inside AREA 1, the ring described above: diesel cars of Euro 4 and below, and diesel light commercial vehicles (N1) of Euro 4 and below.

So a Euro 3 or Euro 4 diesel may drive in Genoa on a weekday morning and may not drive into the centre, the waterfront or Albaro while doing so. The order sets no diesel line above Euro 4 anywhere, and no diesel particulate filter, retrofit or mileage scheme appears in it — unlike the Emilia-Romagna orders, Genoa offers no Move-In-style telematics alternative.

Source: Comune di Genova, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Genova — Ordinanza della Sindaca, ATTO N. ORD 256 del 05/08/2025, the ORDINA section, the AREA 1 and AREA 2 vehicle lists

Penalty if you do not comply

The order states which law punishes a breach and does not state a sum: "in caso di inottemperanza saranno applicate le sanzioni previste dall'art. 6 comma 14 e dall'art. 7 comma 13 bis, del D.Lgs.

285 del 30/4/1992 e successive modificazioni", enforced by the Polizia Locale and the other competent control bodies. Those are two paragraphs of the Italian Highway Code, and the order cites them without reproducing their amounts — so we give none.

We will not carry a figure across from another Italian record that happens to cite the same paragraph, for the reason the corpus has already been bitten by: the amounts in the Highway Code are revised nationally every two years under article 195, and an order that quotes a range quotes the range current when it was signed.

Genoa's ZTL record is null on the same question for the same publisher, and the city's ZTL rulebook is explicit that enforcement here is remote and after the fact rather than a stop at the roadside.

How to comply
  • Work out your Euro class and your fuel first, because that is what decides your case — not a permit, a payment or a route. Petrol cars: banned at Euro 1 and below, everywhere in Genoa. Diesel cars: banned at Euro 2 and below everywhere in Genoa, and at Euro 4 and below inside AREA 1. Mopeds and motorcycles: Euro 0 and below everywhere, Euro 1 and below inside AREA 1, with a lower line again for two-stroke engines.
  • Check the clock and the day. The ban runs 07:00–19:00 on working days from Monday to Friday. Saturdays, Sundays and Italian public holidays are outside it, as is every evening and every night. A banned vehicle that arrives after 19:00 and leaves before 07:00 never meets the rule.
  • 🚨 If you live outside Liguria or outside Italy and have a hotel booking in Genoa, read exclusion 11 before you do anything else: "Veicoli di residenti fuori regione o all'estero muniti di prenotazione alberghiera nel Comune, limitatamente al tragitto di arrivo e partenza". It excludes your vehicle for the arrival journey and the departure journey — not for driving around the city in between — and the condition is that you can show the booking. This is the one exclusion in the list written for a visitor rather than for a trade.
  • Carry the paper for whichever exclusion you are relying on. The order is explicit that every derogation is conditional: the journey has to be strictly tied to the declared purpose, and the hour and the route have to be consistent with it, evidenced by official badges, professional cards, bookings, medical certificates, detailed self-declarations or an employer's statement.
  • Taxis and hire cars with driver (NCC) are excluded by name, both in service and on the way to or from a job — exclusion 3. Arriving by taxi is therefore an answer to this scheme. ⚠️ It is not an answer to Genoa's ZTL, which is a different scheme with a different boundary and whose rulebook never mentions taxis at all.
  • Electric and zero-emission vehicles are excluded, and so are methane, LPG and hybrid vehicles, including dual-fuel conversions — exclusions 1 and 2. A petrol car converted to LPG after registration counts.
  • Car-pooling is an exclusion with a stated threshold: at least three people on board in a vehicle with four or more seats, at least two in a two- or three-seater — exclusion 20.
  • If you are driving onto a ferry, exclusion 19 covers vehicles embarked or bound for embarkation, with travel documents. Genoa's ferry terminal sits inside AREA 1.
  • Historic vehicles on the official registers (ASI, FMI and the like), or with an application lodged, are excluded — exclusion 14. A trade plate is excluded for repair or sales purposes — exclusion 15. A booked service, repair or roadworthiness test is excluded for the day of the appointment and the shortest route — exclusion 16.
  • A vehicle carrying a disabled person with a CUDE badge or its equivalent is excluded, as are vehicles of third-sector bodies and volunteer associations transporting disabled people — exclusion 6. Journeys to and from hospitals and clinics for treatment, tests or discharge are excluded with the documentation, even when the patient is not in the car on one leg.
  • Two duties apply across the whole municipality at every hour and are easy to overlook because they are not about your Euro class: a bus must switch its engine off while standing at a terminus, and a goods vehicle must switch its engine off while loading or unloading.
  • Do not treat this as Genoa's only restriction. The ZTL in the old town runs on its own terms, twenty-four hours a day, with its own permits and its own gates, and the ZTL rulebook expressly excludes this scheme's areas from its scope and says the two act "autonomously and alongside" one another. Being clear of one says nothing about the other.
Source: Comune di Genova, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Genova — Ordinanza della Sindaca, ATTO N. ORD 256 del 05/08/2025, the ORDINA section and the twenty-five numbered exclusions that follow it, plus the closing AVVERTE and MANDA sections

Sources

Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-21.

Before you set off

Also in Genoa

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

Other cities in Italy

And 35 more in Italy