Driving in Perugia: Divieto di transito ai Bus Turistici

Perugia, Italy · Heavy vehicle ban

What applies

Perugia's hill town is closed to tourist coaches, and the rule is keyed to a single number: 9 metres. Ordinanza n. 1259 of 26 November 2008 bans the transit of tourist coaches — which the city's own vademecum defines as vehicles longer than 9 m — through Perugia's urban area, and it does not ban them by weight, by emission class or by the hour.

A coach either is over 9 m or it is not. What makes this a usable page rather than a prohibition notice is that the city publishes the alternative route in the same breath, street by street and junction by junction.

Without a permit, a coach may enter the city only from the "Madonna Alta" exit of the Perugia–Bettolle raccordo and only along Via Centova, and from there it may drive either to a destination outside the ban area or to the Pian di Massiano car park — from which the Minimetrò, the city's automated people mover, climbs to the historic centre.

That is the route a coach carrying visitors is expected to take, and it works without any paperwork at all.

With a permit, the route changes completely: the coach enters from the "Perugia Piscille" exit instead and drives to the Bus Terminal in Piazza Partigiani, for the length of a drop-off and no longer, unless Busitalia — which runs the terminal — has separately authorised a long stay inside it. ⚠️ Piazza Italia, the balcony at the top of the old town that a driver might assume is the obvious set-down point, is barred to anything over 9 m in every case, permit or no permit; the vademecum states it as a standing exception rather than as a detail.

The permit costs €10.00 a day and is bought online at least five working days ahead, paid through PagoPA and printed for the dashboard. That price is new: Deliberazione di Giunta n. 283 of 25 June 2025 introduced it, and the same deliberation records that until then no payment at all was required for bus permits.

The €10.00 is also not the whole bill, and the second half of it is now a number rather than a warning: the terminal is run by Busitalia, whose own published prospectus charges an unscheduled tourist coach €6.00 for a 15-minute set-down slot, or €18.00 for the first hour and €12.00 for each hour after that if a longer stay is authorised at all.

A single drop-off at the foot of the old town therefore starts at €16.00 between the two of them. And the permit buys eligibility rather than a place: the prospectus ranks tourist coaches behind local and long-distance service buses and admits them only if a stall happens to be free. 🆕 Two things this page said it could not tell you until 2026-09-23, and both are now answered from the ordinance itself.

The ban runs "dal lunedì alla Domenica 0-24" — every hour of every day, with no night window and no season.

And the area is the centro abitato of Perugia with two named exceptions, the via Settevalli axis outbound from via Dottori and the via Cortonese axis outbound from viale Centova, which is why the compulsory approach runs along via Centova in the first place. ⚠️ What changed was our reading, not the city's publishing: three cycles recorded Ordinanza n.

1259/2008 as an unreadable scan, and it is not one — it carries a full text layer set glyph by glyph, and scripts/pdf-all-literals.py recovers every word of it. The one thing that stays out of reach is the planimetria attached to the order, which is a drawing of a legal boundary the city does not publish as coordinates.

Source: Comune di Perugia, Polizia locale e sicurezza urbana, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Perugia, Polizia locale e sicurezza urbana — "Vademecum per l'accesso dei Bus Turistici nella città di Perugia", the city's own operational guide to the scheme, published as the terms-and-conditions document attached to the service record for tourist-coach permits. This is the instrument's practical statement by the authority that enforces it: the 9-metre definition, the two entry routes, the Pian di Massiano and Piazza Partigiani destinations, the Piazza Italia exception and the long-stay obligation

Daily charge
€10.00 per day, per permit, for the derogation that allows a coach to reach the Piazza Partigiani terminal — not a charge for entering Perugia, which no coach may do without one, and not the total a driver pays. The terminal itself is billed separately by Busitalia, which runs it under a lease rather than on the Comune's behalf: €6.00 for a 15-minute set-down by an unscheduled tourist coach, €18.00 for a first hour and €12.00 for each further hour or part hour if a longer stay is authorised. The figure recorded here is the municipal one because it is the one the municipal act sets; the terminal's tariff is sourced on this record too, and the two are kept apart rather than added, because they are set by different bodies, revised on different cycles and payable to different tillsSource: Comune di Perugia, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Perugia — Deliberazione della Giunta Comunale n. 283 of 25 June 2025, "MODIFICA PAGAMENTI PERMESSI ZTL SETTORI ESTERNI E GIORNALIERI", the act that sets the figure. Its dispositive section resolves "di richiedere i permessi Bus in deroga on line utilizzando il programma dei permessi giornalieri con un costo di 10,00 € per ciascun permesso richiesto", and its recitals state the starting point: that until then no payment at all was provided for the bus permits being issued. The city's service record for the scheme publishes the same €10.00 in plain words

When it operates

Every hour of every day. Ordinanza n.

1259 of 26 November 2008 states it in one line of article 1 — "Tale divieto e' valido dal lunedi' alla Domenica 0-24" — so there is no night window, no weekday split and no season in which a coach over 9 m may drive into Perugia's urban area without a permit. ⚠️ This record said the opposite until 2026-09-23, and the correction is worth stating because of what caused it rather than to confess.

Three cycles read this order as an unreadable scan: read-source.mjs recovers 62 characters of page furniture from it and pdf-cid-text.py finds no font that maps its codes back to characters. Neither conclusion was wrong about the tool; both were wrong about the document.

The order carries a full text layer set glyph by glyph, the same shape as Siena's ordinanza 8/D, and scripts/pdf-all-literals.py reads all of it — 16 365 characters across five streams, articles 1 to 4 entire. The hour was in the file the whole time. 🔑 One qualification a coach driver should hold on to: this is the hour of the transit ban, and it is not the hour of anything else in the city.

The Busitalia terminal at piazza Partigiani sells its own clock — a ticket office open 07:00 to 19:00 on working days, and peak windows of 07:30–08:30 and 12:45–14:15 in which an unscheduled coach may only set down — and none of that lifts or narrows the ban above. ⚠️ And one suspension is on the record without being a rule: Determinazione Dirigenziale n.

142 of 23 July 2009 suspended both this order and its 2009 amendment from 9 to 23 August, because the Minimetrò closes for annual maintenance and every coach therefore had to be able to reach piazza Partigiani. The city still lists that determination among the instruments this scheme rests on.

It names a date range and not a recurrence, and no later document we hold renews it, so this record does not tell anyone that the ban lifts in August — it records that it once did, for a fortnight, seventeen years ago.

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

Comune di Perugia — Ordinanza Dirigenziale n. 1259 del 26/11/2008, "Divieto di transito ai Bus Turistici", article 1. The instrument that creates the ban and the only document in the scheme that states its hours

Area covered

The "ambito urbano" of Perugia — the urban area — with its outer edge defined inside the 2008 ordinance and its practical shape published as a set of named roads. What the city does state, and states repeatedly, is the geometry a driver actually needs: which junction to leave the trunk road at, which street to follow, and where the coach may stop.

Without a permit, the only lawful entry is the "Madonna Alta" exit on the raccordo Perugia–Bettolle, and in any case along Via Centova; from there a coach may run to a destination outside the ban area, or to the Pian di Massiano car park, which is the interchange with the Minimetrò up to the centre.

With a permit, the entry moves to the "Perugia Piscille" exit and the destination becomes the Bus Terminal in Piazza Partigiani, at the foot of the historic centre. ⚠️ Piazza Italia sits above that terminal and is excluded from the permit: the vademecum states that transit as far as Piazza Italia remains barred to vehicles over 9 m, which means the permit buys the terminal and not the town.

Two further exits are named as grounds for a derogation rather than as open routes, and they exist because the ban is a ring rather than a point: coaches bound for accommodation near the Prepo exit on the raccordo, or near the Ponte Felcino exit on the E-45, may apply on the reasoning that those approaches load the city's traffic less.

After setting passengers down, a coach without private parking at its destination must go to the long-stay area at Pian di Massiano and wait there; parking along the street or in other public car parks is expressly forbidden. 🆕 And the perimeter is no longer missing in words, only in geometry. Article 1 of Ordinanza n.

1259/2008 defines it: the ban runs inside the urban area as drawn on a plan attached to the order, and "L'area perimetrata corrisponde al centro abitato di Perugia" with exactly two exceptions — the via Settevalli axis from its junction with via Dottori outbound, and the via Cortonese axis from its junction with viale Centova outbound.

So the shape is the legally signposted built-up area of Perugia minus two outbound corridors, which is a far more usable answer than "defined in the ordinance", and it explains why the compulsory approach runs along via Centova: that corridor is outside the ban. ⚠️ This record said until 2026-09-23 that the ordinance was a scan and its perimeter unreadable.

The order is not a scan — it carries a full text layer set glyph by glyph, which three previous readings mistook for an empty page, and scripts/pdf-all-literals.py recovers all 16 365 characters of it. 🔑 What genuinely cannot be reused is the attached planimetria, which is a drawing: the centro abitato boundary is a signposted legal line the city does not publish here as coordinates, so a driver improvising a way round still cannot be told where the last metre lies.

For the route above that costs nothing, because the named roads are the whole of the instruction.

Source: Comune di Perugia, Polizia locale e sicurezza urbana, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Perugia, Polizia locale e sicurezza urbana — "Vademecum per l'accesso dei Bus Turistici nella città di Perugia", points 1, 4, 5 and 6: the compulsory Madonna Alta / Via Centova approach and its two destinations, the Perugia Piscille approach that a derogation permit opens, the standing exclusion of Piazza Italia, the Prepo and Ponte Felcino grounds for derogation, and the obligation to wait at Pian di Massiano rather than on the street

Why there is no map here
Perugia publishes the boundary inside the ordinance that creates it, in words this record can now quote and in a drawing it still cannot trace. ⚠️ The reason below replaces one that was wrong in its premise and right in its verdict, and the difference matters to whoever reads it next. Until 2026-09-23 this entry said Ordinanza n. 1259 of 26 November 2008 was "a signed scan of a typed order" whose perimeter sat in it as an image. It is not a scan. scripts/read-source.mjs recovers 62 characters of page furniture from it, and scripts/pdf-cid-text.py answers "fonts with ToUnicode: 0 · chars: 0" — both true, and both statements about our tools rather than about the file. The fourth branch, scripts/pdf-all-literals.py, reads 16 365 characters from it: articles 1 to 4 entire, set glyph by glyph in the shape Siena's ordinanza 8/D taught this corpus to expect. 🔑 Article 1 states the perimeter in words — "L'area perimetrata corrisponde al centro abitato di Perugia", minus the via Settevalli axis outbound from via Dottori and the via Cortonese axis outbound from viale Centova — and points to a planimetria attached to the order as its integral part. That drawing is what cannot be reused: the centro abitato is a signposted legal boundary that the Comune does not publish here as coordinates, and tracing the attachment by eye would be our line rather than the city's. So published_unusable still holds, and it now holds for the ordinary reason a drawing is not data, not because the document was unreadable. This heals if the city publishes the area as geometry or as a street list of the kind Como publishes; it does NOT heal by reissuing the order with a text layer, which was the previous entry's advice and would send a later cycle to fetch something it already has. No open-data portal at the Comune di Perugia was found to look for a polygon in, and the Comune's albo-pretorio page delegates to an external system whose address it does not print in the HTML we can read.

The authority's own map: Comune di Perugia, Polizia locale e sicurezza urbana

Petrol standard

This scheme sets no petrol threshold, and the absence is structural rather than unrecorded: the question it asks is how long the vehicle is, not what comes out of it. A Euro 6 coach of 12 m is banned and a Euro 2 minibus of 8 m is not.

Nothing in the vademecum, in the service record or in Deliberazione 283/2025 conditions the coach ban on an emission class. ⚠️ One nearby fact must not be mistaken for one: the Comune's separate daily ZTL permits for ordinary vehicles ARE priced by Euro class — Deliberazione 283/2025 sets eight tariff lines running from €2.00 for a Euro 4–6 vehicle under 25 quintali of payload to €12.00 for a Euro 0–3 vehicle over 75 quintali, with a ninth line of €10.00 for foreign-registered vehicles.

That is a price list, not a ban: no class is refused entry on those grounds, and none of it applies to this record, whose subject is barred by length whatever it pays. Umbria publishes no regional low-emission scheme of the Lombardy or Emilia-Romagna kind that we have read, and this record makes no claim either way about one.

Diesel standard

The same as for petrol, and for the same structural reason: the trigger is 9 metres of vehicle, not a diesel class. Practically every tourist coach on this road is a diesel, and the ban catches the newest of them exactly as it catches the oldest — the vademecum's definition is "mezzi di lunghezza superiore ai 9m" and nothing else.

The Euro-class tariff table in Deliberazione 283/2025 belongs to the city's ordinary daily ZTL permits and prices rather than prohibits, and it is described in the petrol field so that a reader meeting it elsewhere does not import it here. No regional diesel restriction covering Perugia has been read by this project; we do not assert that none exists.

Penalty if you do not comply

Perugia publishes no figure for this offence, and the shape of the silence is now measured rather than assumed. The service record, the vademecum and Deliberazione 283/2025 all describe the permit and none of them states a sanction. 🆕 The instrument that would is Ordinanza n.

1259 of 2008, and it has now been read in full: it closes with "L'inosservanza delle prescrizioni di cui alla presente ordinanza è punita con le sanzioni previste dal vigente Codice della Strada" — the national code, no municipal figure, exactly the formula Genoa, Palermo, Como and Modena use. ⚠️ Until 2026-09-23 this note said the order was a scan we could not read and that we therefore could not confirm even that much.

The confirmation changes nothing about the amount and it changes the standing of the absence: the sum is missing because the city chose to legislate by reference, not because we failed to open a document. The amount for driving past a traffic prohibition under art. 7 of d.lgs.

285/1992 is national rather than municipal and is recalculated every two years under art.

195 of the same code, which is precisely why no figure is carried across from another Italian city here (D-234). ⚠️ There is also a second, non-monetary consequence a driver should weigh: the permit exists in a system that reads plates at the terminal barrier, so an unauthorised transit is recorded whether or not anyone is standing there. We hold no figure for it, and it is not estimated.

How to comply
  • Measure the coach first. The whole scheme turns on one threshold — over 9 metres long — and nothing else about the vehicle matters. Under 9 m and this record does not apply to you at all; over it and you are inside the ban from the moment you leave the trunk road.
  • The no-permit route is the normal way in, and it is free. Leave the Perugia–Bettolle raccordo at "Madonna Alta", follow Via Centova, and drive to the Pian di Massiano car park. The Minimetrò runs from there up to the historic centre, so a coachload of passengers reaches the town without the coach ever entering the ban area. Plan on this unless you have a specific reason not to.
  • ⚠️ Do not improvise a different exit. The vademecum says the obligation is to enter "dalla sola uscita" — from that exit alone — and in any case along Via Centova. A coach that leaves the raccordo somewhere else is in breach before it reaches any of the streets a permit would cover.
  • If you need to set passengers down at the foot of the old town rather than at Pian di Massiano, that is what the permit buys, and it changes your approach. A permit holder enters at "Perugia Piscille", not at Madonna Alta, and drives to the Bus Terminal in Piazza Partigiani. Read that carefully: the two routes are different roads, and holding the permit means taking the second one.
  • Apply online at least five working days before the day you travel. The request is made through the Comune's permits platform, paid by PagoPA, and the permit is then downloaded, printed and displayed visibly on the dashboard. It is not something that can be arranged at the barrier.
  • ⚠️ Check who is allowed to apply, because it may not be you. The applicant must be a licensed tourist guide or guide association on the national register with residence or registered office in Umbria, an accommodation provider or restaurant with premises in the urban area as defined by the 2008 ordinance, a tour operator, or a carrier. A driver acting for themselves is not on that list — in practice the booking at the other end is what generates the permit, so ask the hotel, the restaurant or the operator to raise it.
  • Budget two separate charges, because two different bodies are charging you. The Comune's permit is €10.00 a day under Deliberazione 283/2025. Busitalia, which runs the Piazza Partigiani terminal, bills its own tariff on top, and for an unscheduled tourist coach — which is what a one-off visit is — that is €6.00 for a 15-minute set-down slot. So the realistic floor for a single drop-off at the foot of the old town is €16.00, not €10.00.
  • If you need longer than 15 minutes inside the terminal, the price changes shape: €18.00 for the first hour and €12.00 for each further hour or part of an hour. Operators running the route regularly pay less on a subscription — over 100 entries a year, €12.00 for the first hour and €8.00 afterwards; over 200, €10.00 and €8.00 — but those are annual-volume rates, not something arranged on the day.
  • ⚠️ A long stay is not always on offer, and the deciding factor is what time you arrive. On working days between 07:30 and 08:30 and between 12:45 and 14:15, an unscheduled tourist coach may enter for passenger set-down only, 15 minutes maximum, on whichever free stall the staff assign at the gate. Outside those two peaks — Busitalia calls the rest of the day "morbida" — a longer stay may be authorised, but only if a stall is free. Plan the long option for the middle of the afternoon rather than for late morning.
  • ⚠️ And do not read the terminal's clock as the ban's clock. Those windows govern whether Busitalia will let you park inside its own premises. They say nothing about when the Comune's 9-metre transit ban applies — and the ban's own answer is that it never lifts: article 1 of the 2008 ordinance makes it valid "dal lunedì alla Domenica 0-24". Arriving at 15:00 does not make the transit lawful; it only changes what the terminal will sell you.
  • ⚠️ The €10.00 permit is a precondition for the terminal, not a reservation of a place in it. The PIA puts tourist coaches last in the queue — priority to local public-transport buses, then to long-distance scheduled coaches, and only then "in base alla disponibilità degli stalli" to tourist coaches already authorised by the Comune to transit the Centro Storico. Holding the permit is what makes you eligible to be admitted; it does not guarantee a stall.
  • Paying at the terminal is done on the way out, not the way in. For an occasional, unscheduled service the driver keys the coach's plate into the display at the entrance and settles at the ticket office when the visit ends. There is one vehicle entrance, in Largo Cacciatori delle Alpi, and one exit, in Via Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. ⚠️ The ticket office is staffed on working days from 07:00 to 19:00 — the prospectus does not say how payment is taken outside those hours, and we are not going to guess for it.
  • Then leave, and leave to the right place. Unless the accommodation has its own private parking, the coach must go to the long-stay area at Pian di Massiano and wait for the passengers there — they come back down by Minimetrò. Parking on the street or in other public car parks is expressly forbidden, and the vademecum gives road safety as the reason rather than convenience.
  • ⚠️ Piazza Italia is not available at any price. The vademecum states that transit as far as Piazza Italia remains barred to vehicles over 9 m, and it says so in the middle of the paragraph describing what the permit allows — so it is an exception to the permit, not to the ban. If your itinerary says "drop at Piazza Italia", it is wrong.
  • Know how the barrier behaves, because it differs by day. On working days the access barrier at the autostazione is operated by a member of staff. On holidays it opens automatically on recognition of the authorised plate, and if the plate is not recognised there is a keypad beside it for manual entry. A permit bought in the applicant's name but presented on a different vehicle will fail at exactly that point.
  • If your destination is not the centre at all, say so when applying: coaches bound for accommodation near the Prepo exit on the raccordo or the Ponte Felcino exit on the E-45 are named in the vademecum as cases where a derogation may be requested, on the reasoning that those approaches load the city less.
  • There is no hour at which this becomes legal, and that is now quoted rather than suspected. The ordinance makes the ban valid Monday to Sunday, 0–24, so an early start or a late arrival changes nothing. ⚠️ Two sets of hours nearby are not this one: the terminal's opening times, described above, and the permits office's counter hours. Neither lifts the transit ban.
  • ⚠️ There are eight ways past the ban other than a permit, and a visiting coach is on none of them. Article 2 of the ordinance lets through buses under 9 m, scheduled service buses, and coaches whose booking is held by a licensed guide association, a restaurant, or a hotel — each of those with the article 3 permit, and each with its own destination written in: the guide association's coach may run to the Piazza Partigiani terminal to set down and must then go to Pian di Massiano to collect; the restaurant's coach may run to the restaurant. Long parking inside the area is allowed only on the restaurant's or hotel's own private land, or at Pian di Massiano. A coach that simply wants to visit Perugia has no category of its own.
  • If your hotel is inside the ZTL, the coach permit reaches further than you would expect. Article 2 letter g gives a coach booked into a hotel inside the ZTL transit as far as the hotel for the whole stay, for loading and unloading only, and grants ZTL transit with it — limited to the route needed to reach the hotel and to move on to a long-stay car park. A hotel inside the perimeter but outside the ZTL is covered by letter f, which Ordinanza n. 47 of 15 January 2009 rewrote to add the Piazza Partigiani terminal to the hotel itself, because the Minimetrò does not serve those hotels. ⚠️ Where the booking is at a hotel inside the ZTL, the city requires the coach's registration number with the booking; elsewhere it does not.
  • The permit is issued to the hotel or the guide association, not to you, and it takes 72 hours. Under article 3 the hotel or association sends the Ufficio Permessi a copy of the booking by fax or email; the office returns a contrassegno carrying a unique code within 72 hours of receiving it, and notes on the pass whether ZTL access is included — which it grants only where the hotel is inside the ZTL. The office sends the day's authorised codes to the municipal police control room each morning, and for Saturdays and public holidays on the last working day before. ⚠️ So a booking made on a Saturday for that Sunday cannot be in the list.
Source: Comune di Perugia, read 2026-09-22
Full citation

Comune di Perugia — the service record "Permessi per bus turistici" (Polizia locale e sicurezza urbana, page updated 26 June 2026) for the €10.00 daily charge, the five-working-day lead time, the categories entitled to apply, the 15-minute paid stop inside the autostazione and the weekday/holiday behaviour of the barrier; read together with the city's "Vademecum per l'accesso dei Bus Turistici" for the 9-metre definition, the two approach routes, the Piazza Italia exclusion, the Prepo and Ponte Felcino derogations and the obligation to wait at Pian di Massiano

Sources

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

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