Driving in Padua: ZTL Centro Storico

Padua, Italy · Limited traffic zone

Official name Zona a Traffico Limitato del Centro Storico

Partly in force in Padua right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 11:04 · Europe/Rome

  • In force Zona A — the part of the historic centre that opens outside its hours; working days
  • Not in force Zona A — Sundays and public holidays, when the zone closes six hours later
  • In force Zona B — the round-the-clock core, closed every day of the year

Padua's public holidays do not switch this scheme off, they move its start: on "giorni festivi" Zona A closes at 14:00 instead of 08:00. We hold no official, dated and reusable list of the public holidays currently in force in Italy — the same gap the Florence, Rome, Milan, Modena, Genoa and Palermo records record — so we cannot apply that shift. On an Italian public holiday falling Monday to Saturday this page will say Zona A is in force between 08:00 and 14:00 when the city says it is not. The error only ever runs that way, towards warning a driver who was in fact free. Sunday is already handled in the rules below, because Sunday carries the festivo window rather than the working-day one; what the missing calendar costs is only the weekday holidays. Zona B is unaffected either way — it never opens.

This encodes two zones in one timetable, and a driver is under one of them, not both. Zona B is closed 24 hours a day; Zona A is closed 08:00–23:30 on working days and 14:00–23:30 on Sundays and holidays. A verdict that says "in force" is therefore always right for Zona B and only sometimes right for Zona A — which street you are on decides, and the city publishes that division as a map rather than as a list this record could encode.

Saturday is treated as a working day here, and the publisher does not say so in as many words. Italian practice reads "feriali" as Monday to Saturday and "festivi" as Sundays and public holidays, and the map's legend uses exactly that pair. If the city ever meant Saturday to be festivo, this timetable is six hours stricter than the rule on Saturday mornings — the safe direction, and it is written down rather than assumed away.

The gates carry the same split and are worth checking against your route: Largo Europa and Via Busonera are active 00:00–24:00, the other four listed gates on Zona A's hours. The publisher says there are seven gates and lists six, so this timetable cannot be complete about the ways in.

The reserved lanes are not in this schedule and run stricter. Most of the twelve camera-watched bus and taxi lanes are closed to ordinary traffic at every hour; four — Via Cavazzana, Via Leopardi, Stazione nord-ovest and Via Tommaseo — are open only 21:00–07:00. They sit under a different order and a ZTL authorisation does not reach them.

The pedestrian areas inside the zone are stricter again, under Ordinanza n. 464 del 25/05/2023, and this record does not hold them.

This timetable is a car's, not a van's, and a van is under a third clock stricter than either zone. A goods vehicle up to 3.5 tonnes on diesel or petrol may enter only 05:00–11:00 and 15:00–17:00, on every day of the week alike — so on a Sunday morning, when Zona A is open to a car until 14:00, the same street is closed to a diesel van between 11:00 and 15:00. Electric vans, and methane or LPG vans until 31 December 2027, are not under that clock at all. The rules encoded above do not attempt the split, because the vehicle rather than the hour decides which of the three applies; the van windows are stated under the diesel field with their source.

Nothing here is conditional on emissions or on the season. What decides a case in Padua's centre is whether the plate is authorised or registered, and — for Zona A — the hour.

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

What applies

Padua's historic centre is one restricted zone run on two clocks, and which clock you are under depends on the street rather than on your vehicle. The city divides it into Zona A, closed to unauthorised traffic 08:00–23:30 on working days and 14:00–23:30 on Sundays and public holidays, and Zona B, closed around the clock every day of the year.

Camera gates read the plate at the ways in and out; the two gates that watch Zona B run 00:00–24:00, the rest follow Zona A's hours. Inside the whole zone the speed limit is 30 km/h. Nothing is sold at the gate and there is no day ticket for a visitor to buy: access is granted by an authorisation, or by a plate having been registered in advance, or it is an offence.

Bicycles, kick scooters, mopeds, motorcycles and fully electric vehicles are free to enter — but the electric case is not automatic either, because the city requires the plate to be notified by email with the registration document attached before it counts. ⚠️ The visitor's opening here is real and it is not in the driver's hands.

A hotel, B&B or guarded garage inside the zone may let its guests drive in, and the law then puts the duty on the business, not on you: it must declare your plate and the hour of your transit within 48 hours, for every day you drive in. The rulebook says in as many words that without that declaration the guest's transit is unauthorised.

So the question to ask at check-in is not whether you may drive to the door — it is whether they will register the plate, and for which days.

If nobody can do it for you, the short authorisation exists but the website is shut to you: the city states that the two-hour online permit needs SPID or CIE, Italy's own digital identities, so a visitor's route is the ZTL office counter, where two hours costs 5 euro and 48 hours costs 15 plus a revenue stamp.

And if what you are driving is a van rather than a car, none of the zone's hours above are yours: a diesel or petrol goods vehicle gets two loading windows a day, 05:00–11:00 and 15:00–17:00, weekends and holidays included.

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

Comune di Padova — Settore Mobilità, "Zona a traffico limitato (Ztl) in centro storico", the city's standing page for the zone, last changed 6 February 2026. Read through the site's own Drupal JSON:API endpoint, because the human-facing address serves an empty Angular shell: the rendered HTML normalises to 22 characters and contains none of this text, while /api/entity?path= serves the same node in full

Daily charge

There is no charge for entering and nothing to buy at the gate, for the same reason as in Modena: access to Padua's ZTL is granted rather than sold. The instruments price authorisations, not entries, and the tariff is now read rather than described — allegato B to deliberazione di Giunta comunale n.

239 of 17 May 2023 sets a two-hour temporary pass at 5,00 euro, a pass of up to 48 hours at 15,00 euro plus one 16-euro revenue stamp, and then a monthly ladder from 30,00 euro for one month to 180,00 euro for six, each with its own stamp. ⚠️ A five-euro two-hour pass is the closest thing here to a price a visitor could pay, and it is still not a day charge: it buys two hours, it is an authorisation rather than a ticket, and the city states that requesting it online needs SPID or CIE, which a foreign visitor does not hold.

The same table prices at zero the things a visitor actually reaches — a pass handed to the customer of a public garage, repair shop or accommodation inside the zone is listed as "Gratuito", as is a pass for a wedding, christening or funeral and one for dropping children at nursery or primary school.

The two openings that work without paperwork of your own — being a guest of an accommodation or a guarded garage inside the zone, and leaving the car in the loading bays outside the walls — are both free, and both are set out under how to comply.

When it operates

Two clocks, and the street decides which one you are under. Zona A is closed to unauthorised traffic on working days from 08:00 to 23:30, and on Sundays and public holidays from 14:00 to 23:30 — so a Sunday morning is open where a Monday morning is not. Zona B is closed every day, 24 hours a day, all year.

The gate list follows the same split: Largo Europa and Via Busonera are active "tutti i giorni sia feriali che festivi, dalle 00:00 alle 24:00", while Via del Santo, Ponte S. Gregorio Barbarigo, Via Vescovado and Riviera Mussato are active on Zona A's hours. ⚠️ The publisher states that there are seven entry gates in the historic centre and then lists six, numbered 1 to 6.

We have not invented a seventh and we have not quietly dropped the count: the city's own map is the place to check which gate you are approaching, and its legend repeats both timetables independently of the page. The hours above are the zone's; the reserved lanes inside it run on a stricter, separate clock, and the pedestrian areas inside it stricter again under their own order.

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

Comune di Padova — Settore Mobilità, "Mappa Ztl centro storico", revision of 31 August 2023, the city's own published map of the zone. Cited beside the topic page because its legend states both timetables in the drawing itself, so the hours do not rest on a single page's wording

Area covered

The historic centre inside the Venetian walls, divided by the city into two zones that share one perimeter. Zona B is the round-the-clock core; Zona A is the part that opens outside its hours. The city publishes the division as a map rather than as a street list, and this record does not convert a drawing into a list of streets it cannot read.

What is stated in words is the way in: six numbered entry gates are listed — Largo Europa, Via Busonera, Via del Santo, Ponte S. Gregorio Barbarigo, Via Vescovado and Riviera Mussato — under a sentence that says there are seven. ⚠️ Treat that as a floor rather than a total: there is at least one more controlled way in than the page names, and the map is where the exits are shown.

Separately from the zone, twelve reserved lanes across the wider city are watched by their own cameras under a different order — Via E.

Filiberto, Via Dante, Corso Garibaldi at Via Giotto towards Piazza Garibaldi, Riviera dei Ponti Romani, Stazione nord-ovest, Stazione sud-est, Prato della Valle nord tram lane, Via Beato Pellegrino at Via Raggio di Sole, Via Cavazzana by the Basilica di Santa Giustina, Via Tommaseo between Via Gozzi and Via Valeri/Via Foscolo, Via Leopardi at Via Michele Sanmicheli, and Riviera Businello.

Most of those are closed to ordinary traffic at every hour; four of them — Via Cavazzana, Via Leopardi, Stazione nord-ovest and Via Tommaseo — may be driven between 21:00 and 07:00. They are not part of the ZTL and a ZTL authorisation is not an authorisation for them.

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

Comune di Padova — Settore Mobilità, "Zona a traffico limitato (Ztl) in centro storico", sections "Elenco dei varchi e orari della Ztl" and "Corsie riservate e orari", via the site's Drupal JSON:API endpoint

Why there is no map here
Padua publishes the boundary, and publishes it as a picture. The Settore Mobilità puts out two maps of the zone, revised 31 August 2023 — one of the historic centre and one of the whole scheme — and they are the only place the division between Zona A and Zona B is drawn. The file is 1 915 075 bytes with a single content stream and 4 397 characters of extractable text, and every one of those characters is legend and street labels: there is no polygon in it that a machine can read, and no street list in the text either, so it cannot be turned into a boundary without a human tracing it, which would be our drawing and not the city's. The city's own page describes the perimeter in words only for the gates, and it names six of them under a sentence that says there are seven — so even the entry points cannot be taken as a complete set. ⚠️ The status is published_unusable rather than not_published, and the difference was measured rather than assumed (D-253). Two other channels were checked on 2026-09-22 and neither carries the geometry. The sitemap of www.comune.padova.it — 17 831 URLs, both pages of it read — contains no open-data, GeoJSON or shapefile endpoint for the zone, and dati.comune.padova.it answered with zero bytes. The one cartographic channel the city does run is a counter service: "Materiale cartografico" sells maps on DVD for 20 euro each, collected in person at the Settore Urbanistica, and its own list covers planning instruments — piano degli interventi, PAT, PATI, zone territoriali omogenee, toponomastica — with no traffic zone among them. So this is not a licence refusal and not a robots failure: the drawing is freely readable, it simply is not data. It would heal if the city published the zone as geometry, which is a different event from a licence changing or a robots file being fixed, and filing it under either of those would send a later cycle to re-read something it already has.

The authority's own map: Comune di Padova — Settore Mobilità

Petrol standard

No Euro class lets a petrol car in and none keeps it out: Padua's ZTL turns on authorisation and on plate registration, not on emissions. The one fuel-based opening is at the other end of the scale and it is not a Euro class — the city lists fully electric vehicles among those free to enter, alongside bicycles, kick scooters, mopeds and motorcycles. ⚠️ Free does not mean automatic.

The city requires an electric vehicle's plate to be notified by email to the ZTL office, with a copy of the registration document and the relevant form attached, and says so on the same line that grants the freedom. A hybrid is not named among the free categories. ⚠️ All of that is the passenger-car picture.

For a goods vehicle the fuel does decide something, and what it decides is the hour rather than the right: the city writes diesel and petrol vans as a single class and gives them two loading windows a day, where an electric van has the whole day. That rule and its source are recorded under the diesel field, and it binds a petrol van exactly as it binds a diesel one.

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

Comune di Padova — Settore Mobilità, "Zona a traffico limitato (Ztl) in centro storico", the body of the topic page, via the site's Drupal JSON:API endpoint

Diesel standard

A diesel car is in the same position as a petrol one — the Euro class decides nothing here, because this scheme is not an emissions scheme. What the city writes in terms of the vehicle itself is mass and fuel, never a Euro class.

Mass first: goods vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes laden mass enter by registering the plate through the online portal, and above that weight a separate authorisation is needed, applied for in writing to the Settore Lavori Pubblici with a 16-euro revenue stamp, the original registration document, and a statement of the route, the origin and the destination of the load.

Fuel second, and this is where a van's day is decided: a goods vehicle up to 3.5 tonnes running on diesel or petrol — the city writes the two as one class, "alimentati a gasolio (diesel) o benzina" — may enter for loading and unloading only between 05:00 and 11:00 and between 15:00 and 17:00, and those windows hold on Sundays and public holidays exactly as on working days. A fully electric one may enter 00:00–24:00.

A methane or LPG one may also enter 00:00–24:00, but only until 31 December 2027: that concession was due to lapse at the end of 2025 and was extended by two years by ordinanza n. 2025/62/1346 of 27 November 2025, and from 1 January 2028 those vans fall back to the diesel and petrol windows. ⚠️ The city adds that it will not write to the holders again to remind them of the change.

In every case the registration comes first and admits the van at all the gates except the reserved-lane ones; loading inside a pedestrian area needs a temporary permit on top, and the reserved lanes outside the ZTL stay closed to it. ⚠️ Padua does also sit in the Po basin, whose interregional agreement drives winter diesel restrictions in Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna, and the city's own operator page describes Padua applying alert-level measures under it.

We hold no current source for that scheme: the pages the city publishes on it are the seasons of 2017/2018 to 2019/2020 and one from April 2021, and nothing since. Do not read Modena's or Lombardy's winter bans across to Padua on the strength of the basin alone — this record covers the ZTL and states nothing about an antismog rule we have not sourced.

Source: Comune di Padova, read 2026-09-23
Full citation

Comune di Padova — Settore Mobilità, "Carico e scarico merci nella Ztl (Zona a traffico limitato)", last changed 7 July 2026, via the site's Drupal JSON:API endpoint. The page that states the loading windows by fuel, the one-off plate registration, the methane/LPG concession and its 2028 cliff, and the counter procedure above 3.5 tonnes

Penalty if you do not comply
€80.00 plus procedural and service-of-notice costs, payable within 60 days of notificationSource: Comune di Padova, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Padova — "Multe e ricorsi per transiti abusivi nella Ztl", the city's own page for this offence, last changed 19 August 2025, via the site's Drupal JSON:API endpoint

How to comply
  • Ask your accommodation to register the plate, and ask for which days. A hotel, B&B, hostel or room rental inside the zone may issue its guests temporary passes, and a guarded garage or a repair shop inside the zone may do the same for its customers — but the pass is not what makes the entry lawful. The rulebook puts a separate duty on the business to declare the plate and the time band of the transit within 48 hours of it, through the ZTL management portal, and to do it for every day the car drives in. Without that declaration the rulebook says the customer's transit is unauthorised. The registration is free and it is the operator who makes it.
  • Know what the hotel pass actually covers, because it is narrower than it sounds. The Disciplinare lets the manager hand out temporary passes for "sosta operativa" — pulling up to load and unload for the length of the stay — up to as many passes as the premises has licensed rooms. It is not a permit to keep the car in the zone for your holiday.
  • The cheapest answer is usually to leave the car outside the walls. The city turned roughly 150 loading bays in the streets immediately outside the ZTL into flexible parking: they are reserved for loading and unloading on working days 08:00 to 16:00, and outside those hours and on Sundays and public holidays anyone may park in them. The bays are signed on the ground and on posts.
  • If you are on Zona A and it is a Sunday or a public holiday, the morning is open — the zone closes at 14:00 rather than 08:00 on those days. Zona B is never open, at any hour of any day, so check which zone your destination is on before relying on this.
  • Two wheels are free, and so is an electric car once you have told the city. Bicycles, kick scooters, mopeds and motorcycles need nothing. A fully electric vehicle also enters freely, but the city asks for the plate by email to the ZTL office beforehand, with a copy of the registration document and the form attached — do it before you drive in, not after.
  • If you had the right to enter but your plate was never registered, you have 48 hours. Holders of a disabled person's badge, taxis licensed by other municipalities and others with an entitlement may regularise the transit within 48 hours of the passage through the online applications portal, on proof of the entitlement. The Disciplinare gives this its own article.
  • A short visit can be authorised in advance, but go to a counter, not to the website. The applications portal issues temporary ZTL permits of up to two hours, excluding goods vehicles, and the Disciplinare provides for temporary passes of up to 48 hours, each carrying at most two plates. ⚠️ The city states in as many words that requesting the two-hour permit on the Istanze On Line portal requires signing in with SPID or CIE — Italy's public digital identity and its electronic identity card — and a foreign visitor holds neither. The Disciplinare itself nowhere requires those credentials, and it is the counter that saves the visit: the ZTL office at via Digione 2/L opens Monday, Wednesday and Friday 09:00–12:00 and Tuesday 10:00–13:00 and takes appointments online, and passes of up to 48 hours may also be had from the Polizia Locale front office at via Gozzi 32, 09:00–12:30 on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and 09:00–14:00 on Thursday. Anything longer than 48 hours, and anything for an event or a ceremony, only the ZTL office issues.
  • Know the price before you go. Two hours costs 5,00 euro and up to 48 hours costs 15,00 euro plus a 16-euro revenue stamp; the ladder then runs 30,00 euro for a month to 180,00 euro for six, each with a stamp. Payment at the counter is by debit or credit card only — the city says so of the stamp as well — so do not arrive with cash. ⚠️ Several of the passes a visitor is most likely to need are priced at zero: the pass a public garage, repair shop or accommodation inside the zone hands its customer, the pass for a wedding, a christening or a funeral, and the pass for dropping children at nursery, kindergarten or primary school.
  • If you are driving a van, the zone gives you four hours of the day, not the day. A goods vehicle up to 3.5 tonnes laden running on diesel or petrol may enter to load and unload only 05:00–11:00 and 15:00–17:00, and those windows are the same on Sundays and public holidays as on working days. A fully electric van has 00:00–24:00, and so does a methane or LPG one — but only until 31 December 2027, after which it drops to the diesel windows, and the city says it will send no further reminder. Loading inside one of the pedestrian areas needs a temporary permit on top of all this, and the reserved lanes outside the ZTL are closed to a van at every hour.
  • Register the van's plate first; it is one form and it lasts. Goods vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes enter by notifying the plate to the ZTL office through the online applications portal, and the city states that the declaration is made once and does not expire — but a replacement vehicle, a sale or a disposal must be reported promptly, and there is a separate form for a change of plate. Registration admits the van at every gate except the reserved-lane gates. Above 3.5 tonnes none of this applies: the request goes in writing to the Settore Lavori Pubblici with a 16-euro stamp and the original registration document, together with the route, the origin and the destination of the load.
  • Do not treat the reserved lanes as part of the deal. Twelve bus and taxi lanes across the city are watched by their own cameras under a different order, and most are closed to ordinary traffic at every hour; four of them open only between 21:00 and 07:00. A ZTL authorisation does not open any of them.
  • Inside the whole zone the speed limit is 30 km/h, and parking is allowed only in marked spaces. An unauthorised vehicle faces removal whether it is inside a marked space or outside one.
  • If you hold a physical pass, display it. The original must sit at the front of the cabin, fully legible from outside; a pass not displayed, not stamped, or unreadable through its position or condition counts as no authorisation at all.
  • There is nothing to pay or show at the gate. Cameras read the plate going in and coming out and check it against the authorised list, and an unauthorised plate is fined afterwards — 80 euro plus costs, payable within 60 days of the notice.
Source: Comune di Padova, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Padova — "Disciplinare per il rilascio dei Titoli autorizzatori della Ztl", Allegato A alla D.G.C. n. 239 del 17/05/2023, articles 12, 17, 22, 25 and 26, read together with the city's page on the free parking bays outside the zone

Sources

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

Before you set off

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