Genoa, Italy · Limited traffic zone
In force in Genoa right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 11:04 · Europe/Rome
Nothing here is conditional on the clock. The zone is valid on every day of the year through the whole 24 hours, so this timetable answers "in force" whenever it is asked. What decides a driver's case in Genoa's old town is the plate and the sector, not the hour.
Public holidays make no difference to the ban, for the same reason: it does not step back on any day. Holidays do narrow some permit classes, whose windows are written "giorni feriali" — working days — which makes those days stricter for a permit holder, not looser for anyone else.
⚠️ Via Cairoli, inside Sector 4, is the exception and it runs the other way. Between 11:30 and 19:00 the ZTL there stops and a pedestrian area begins, admitting a shorter list of vehicles than the ZTL does. A permit for this zone is not a permit for that area, and the switch happens in the middle of the day when a visitor is most likely to be driving.
The hours that appear in the rulebook belong to permit classes and are narrower than the zone: wholesale customers and garage customers 08:00–19:00 on working days, commercial agents 08:00–20:00, contracted services 06:00–20:00. Guests of accommodation and electric vehicles are the classes written 00:00–24:00. Holding a permit does not mean holding it at every hour.
Genoa runs a second scheme over different ground and on its own terms: the restriction on the most polluting vehicles under Ordinanza Sindacale 59/2023. The ZTL rulebook expressly excludes those areas from its own scope and states that the measure acts autonomously and alongside it. Being clear of this zone says nothing about that one, and this record does not hold it.
One thing we looked for and did not find, stated rather than guessed: the Disciplinare never mentions taxis or hire cars with driver among the ZTL's own categories — the word does not occur in its 54 pages. They are named only in the separate list for the Via Cairoli pedestrian area. So we do not tell a driver that arriving by taxi is exempt from this ZTL; we do not know that from the publisher, and the gap is the publisher's, not a lapse in the search.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
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.
Genova Parcheggi S.p.A. — "ZTL Centro Storico", the zone page of the company the Comune di Genova names as the responsible office for ZTL access, read together with the Comune's own service record and with the Disciplinare both of them link, all cited separately below
There is no day ticket for a visitor and nothing to pay at the gate.
Genoa sells access by category, not by the day to whoever turns up: the Disciplinare prices a daily permit at €5.00 or €11.00 depending on the class, and every class that carries one is a named trade — emergency call-out, contracted services, cleaning firms, prepared-food delivery, commercial agents, flour and bread deliveries, catering, doctors, temporary care. None of them is "a visitor who would like to drive in".
The one route that does cover a visitor is bought by the accommodation, not by the guest, and it is annual rather than daily: €27.00 for a property with 1 to 10 rooms, €54.00 for 11 to 20 and €100.00 above 20 rooms, valid for all of that property's accesses, every day 00:00–24:00, in the ZTL or the sector it belongs to. The guest pays nothing and buys nothing.
Residents' own permits start at €27.00 a year for the first vehicle, which the Comune restates on its service page, and climb steeply for additional cars — the same table reaches €300.00. Electric vehicles are free: one annual windscreen pass, no charge, valid in every ZTL in the city.
All day, every day, all year. The operator states it in one line — the ZTL "Centro Storico" is valid on every day of the year and through the whole 24 hours — and nothing in the rulebook takes it off for a weekday, a weekend or a season. So the hour you arrive decides nothing here; whether your plate is on the authorised list decides everything.
The hours that do appear belong to permit classes and are narrower than the zone, not wider: wholesale customers 08:00–19:00 on working days, commercial agents 08:00–20:00 on working days, contracted services 06:00–20:00 on working days, garage customers 08:00–19:00 on working days.
Guests of accommodation and electric vehicles are the classes written as 00:00–24:00. ⚠️ One stretch inside the zone runs on a different clock and is stricter, not looser: in Via Cairoli, which is Sector 4, the ZTL stops at 11:30 and a pedestrian area runs until 19:00, open to a shorter list of vehicles than the ZTL is.
Genova Parcheggi S.p.A. — "ZTL Centro Storico", the zone page: the validity sentence and the Via Cairoli pedestrian-area switch
The old town between Piazza della Nunziata and Piazza De Ferrari, split into five sectors that a permit is issued for one at a time.
Sector 1 is bounded by Via delle Fontane, Piazza della Nunziata, Via Bensa, Largo Zecca, Via Cairoli, Piazza della Meridiana, Via Garibaldi, Piazza Fontane Marose, Via XXV Aprile, Piazza De Ferrari, Via Petrarca, Via di Porta Soprana, Piazza Matteotti, Via San Lorenzo, Piazza Raibetta, Via Frate Oliverio, Piazza Caricamento, Piazza Da Varagine and Via Gramsci — and the publisher marks most of those boundary streets "esclusa", outside the zone, with Piazza Matteotti, Piazza Raibetta, Via Frate Oliverio and Piazza Caricamento inside it and Via San Lorenzo split down the middle by house number, even numbers in.
Sector 2 runs from Via di Porta Soprana and the odd side of Via San Lorenzo down to Via Ravasco and Via del Colle, bounded by Piazza Matteotti, Via Turati, Piazza Cavour, Corso Quadrio, Via della Marina and Via della Madre di Dio, all excluded. Sectors 3, 4 and 5 are published as street lists rather than perimeters: Sector 3 is Via Lomellini, Vico Chiuso dei Gatti and Piazzetta di S.
Filippo; Sector 4 is Via Cairoli and the lanes off it — Salita della Rondinella, Via del Piombo, Salita dei Molini, Vico dell'Argento, Salita dell'Oro, Vico alla Casa di Mazzini, Via di San Siro, Salita San Siro, Piazza della Meridiana, Salita di San Francesco, Piazza Grimaldi, Salita and Piazza and Vico di Santa Maria degli Angeli, Via ai Quattro Canti di San Francesco with numbers 1, 2 and 3 taken out, Vico San Pasquale and Vico Brignole; Sector 5 is Via Garibaldi and its lanes, including Piazza della Maddalena, Via Lurago, Via Brignole Sale and Via del Portello.
Eleven electronically controlled gates sit on the perimeter, each valid for one sector: Via di Porta Soprana, Via del Campo, Vico Giannini and Piazza della Raibetta into Sector 1; Via San Giorgio, Vico delle Camelie, Mura delle Grazie and Via Ravasco into Sector 2; Via Lomellini into Sector 3; Via Cairoli into Sector 4; Via Garibaldi into Sector 5. ⚠️ The other eight Genoese ZTLs — Boccadasse, Bolzaneto, Molo, Nervi (Gazzolo), Nervi (Oberdan), Rivarolo, Vernazzola and Caracciolo — are separate zones on separate ground, and this record does not hold them.
Genova Parcheggi S.p.A. — "Confini", the publisher's own street-by-street perimeter for every Genoese ZTL, read with the gate list on the Centro Storico zone page
The authority's own map: Comune di Genova — Direzione Mobilità e Trasporti, open-data catalogue…
No Euro class lets a petrol car into the ZTL and none keeps it out: entry here turns on authorisation, not on the exhaust. What fuel does decide is the electric case.
A fully electric vehicle has free access to every ZTL in Genoa, all days 00:00–24:00, for as long as the errand strictly needs — cars, motorcycles and mopeds alike, and goods vehicles on the same terms — and it is issued a single free annual windscreen pass valid across the whole city.
The pass is obligatory even though the access is free, and where a tariff is scaled by how many vehicles a household declares, electric ones are not counted in.
Emission class does reach the prices of goods-vehicle permits, where a methane, LPG, hybrid or electric vehicle pays €15.00 a year, a Euro 3 or better €27.00, a Euro 2 or Euro 1 €60.00 and a pre-Euro €300.00 — but that is the cost of a trader's permit, not a threshold for getting in. ⚠️ Genoa's actual emissions restriction is a different scheme with its own order, Ordinanza Sindacale 59/2023, and the ZTL rulebook expressly puts it outside its own scope and says it operates autonomously alongside.
This record does not hold it.
Genova Parcheggi S.p.A. — "Panoramica", the general principles of ZTL access: the electric-vehicle regime and the free annual pass
A diesel car stands exactly where a petrol one does: the Euro class changes nothing about whether it may enter the ZTL, and authorisation decides. Diesel does not appear in the access rules at all — the Disciplinare never sets an emission floor for entry, for any fuel.
Where emission class appears it is in the price of a goods-vehicle permit: €15.00 a year for methane, LPG, hybrid or electric, €27.00 for Euro 3 or better, €60.00 for Euro 2 or Euro 1 and €300.00 for pre-Euro.
What does bar a diesel, like any other vehicle, is size: no ZTL Centro Storico authorisation is issued to a vehicle whose laden mass exceeds 3.5 tonnes or whose width exceeds 2.10 metres, and across the city no permit type at all is issued above 3.5 tonnes. ⚠️ The restriction that is about diesel in Genoa is the separate one under Ordinanza Sindacale 59/2023, which this rulebook excludes from its scope; do not read this field as saying an old diesel is free to drive in Genoa.
Comune di Genova, Direzione Smart Mobility — Determinazione Dirigenziale n. 2023-395.0.0.-3 of 06/07/2023 approving "Disciplina dell'accesso alle Zone a Traffico Limitato", section 1.1 on the scope of the rulebook and the goods-vehicle tariff tables
Genoa does not state a figure for the offence a visitor would actually commit, and we will not supply one. Driving into the ZTL without authorisation is an offence under the Codice della Strada, not under the city's rulebook, and the publisher says only that an unauthorised entry "sarà segnalato per l'applicazione delle sanzioni previste" — reported for the application of the penalties provided for.
The 54-page Disciplinare uses the word "sanzione" exactly once, in that sentence, and prices nothing.
What is worth knowing instead is how the offence is detected, because it changes what a driver should expect: the gate cameras read plates remotely with no officer present, so nobody stops you and nothing happens at the barrier — the publisher states in as many words that the violation will be established later and without immediate challenge.
A driver can therefore pass a gate, spend a pleasant afternoon and hear about it by post weeks later, once for every gate crossed.
Comune di Genova, Direzione Smart Mobility — Determinazione Dirigenziale n. 2023-395.0.0.-3 of 06/07/2023, "Disciplina dell'accesso alle Zone a Traffico Limitato", categories AUT_09b and AUT_09c on guests of accommodation, read together with Genova Parcheggi's Centro Storico zone page for the pedestrian-area list
Genova Parcheggi S.p.A. — "ZTL Centro Storico", the zone page. The operative statement for this zone: that it is valid every day of the year through the whole 24 hours, the eleven gates with the sector each admits to, the remote camera enforcement, the 3.5 tonne and 2.10 metre limits on any authorisation, the list of categories, and the Via Cairoli pedestrian-area switch between 11:30 and 19:00. Genova Parcheggi is the company the Comune di Genova names as the responsible office for ZTL access on its own service record
Genova Parcheggi S.p.A. — "Panoramica", the general principles that run across every Genoese ZTL: the list of the zones, the electric-vehicle regime with its free annual pass, free access for cycles, the 48-hour regularisation for an unregistered vehicle of an authorised category, and the 3.5 tonne ceiling on every permit type
Genova Parcheggi S.p.A. — "Confini", the publisher's own street-by-street delimitation of every Genoese ZTL, including the five Centro Storico sectors with each boundary street marked included or excluded
Comune di Genova — service record "Richiedere permesso di accesso ad Area ZTL", last updated 25 May 2026. The city's own page: it names all nine Zone a Traffico Limitato, names Genova Parcheggi S.p.A. as the responsible office and as a public company the Comune created, and states the resident's first-vehicle price. The freshest statement the authority itself makes about this scheme
Comune di Genova, Direzione Smart Mobility — Determinazione Dirigenziale n. 2023-395.0.0.-3, adopted and executive from 06/07/2023, approving the document "Disciplina dell'accesso alle Zone a Traffico Limitato" and taking up the changes made by DGC-2023-97. The governing instrument, 54 pages: the categories, the tariffs, the permit windows, the guests-of-accommodation route and the express exclusion of the Ordinanza Sindacale 59/2023 areas from its scope. Published by Genova Parcheggi as the downloadable rulebook behind its own ZTL pages
Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-21.
A city can run more than one scheme, and they do not always answer the same question.