Italy: 3 schemes to know about before you drive in.
Pisa has 3 driving restrictions on our books: the Zona a Traffico Limitato del Centro Storico (settori Nord e Sud) (limited traffic zone), the Zona a Traffico Limitato dei Lungarni (limited traffic zone) and the Zona a Traffico Limitato nel quartiere di Porta a Lucca (ZTL Stadio) (limited traffic zone). What is a limited traffic zone?
Sources last read on 2026-09-21, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-20.
Pisa's historic centre is shut to traffic around the clock.
The ordinance in force since 1 January 2025 organises it as two sectors — Centro Storico Nord, which contains Piazza del Duomo and the Leaning Tower, and Centro Storico Sud on the other side of the Arno — and inside both it forbids access, transit and parking to every vehicle 0–24 on every day of the year, with a 30 km/h limit throughout, subject only to the exemptions it lists.
Nothing is sold at the gate and there is no visitor's day ticket: bicycles, mopeds, light quadricycles and motorcycles are exempt outright, holders of a disabled person's badge and taxis are on a standing white list, and a visitor driving a car gets in through their accommodation.
A hotel, guesthouse or B&B inside the zone puts the plate on the portal's "lista bianca T" within ten hours of the car entering, recording the plate and the time of entry, for at most three days at a time. Permits are tied to one sector, so an authorisation for the north side does not open the south.
Pisa closes its riverside to traffic on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. From 22:00 to 05:00 the next morning, nine streets and squares along the Arno — Lungarno Pacinotti, Piazza Carrara, Via San Nicola, the stretch of Via Santa Maria between them, Lungarno Mediceo, Piazza Mazzini, Lungarno Galileo Galilei, Lungarno Gambacorti and the Ponte di Mezzo itself — become a limited traffic zone with a 30 km/h limit.
The measure was seasonal for years and was made permanent from 1 January 2025 because of the number of people on foot there at night. Bicycles, mopeds, light quadricycles and motorcycles are exempt, and a car already parked inside at 22:00 may stay where it is and drive out at any point before 05:00. A permit for either historic-centre sector, temporary or permanent, is automatically valid here as well.
Pisa's third limited traffic zone is a football zone. The Porta a Lucca district, north-east of the centre around the Arena Garibaldi stadium, became a ZTL in 2026 with twenty-four camera gates, and the ordinance switches it on only for home matches of Pisa S.C.: the cameras read plates from two hours before kick-off until the end of the first half, on the dates and at the times of the league calendar.
Outside that window the streets are ordinary streets and nothing is being enforced. There is nothing to buy — access is either exempt, on a standing white list, or covered by a free authorisation issued by PisaMo to people who live in the zone or in the block immediately north of it.
Customers of shops and restaurants inside the zone are covered too, and the deadline is the trap: the business enters the plate and the time of entry within twenty-four hours of the car arriving, which is a different number from the ten hours Pisa's hotels get in the historic centre.