Malta: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.
Mdina has one driving restriction on our books: the Mdina (Restriction of Access and Transit of Vehicles) Regulations, S.L… (limited traffic zone). What is a limited traffic zone?
Sources last read on 2026-09-15, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2027-03-15.
The shortest restriction in this corpus, and one of the strictest.
Regulation 2 of the Mdina (Restriction of Access and Transit of Vehicles) Regulations, in force since 13 July 2004, reads in full: 'No vehicle, other than karrozzin, shall have access to any street or square inside Mdina nor circulate within that city at any time.' There is no charge, no permit you can buy at the gate, no emission test, no weight test and no hour at which the ban lifts — the exception the legislator wrote into the sentence itself is the karrozzin, the horse-drawn cab that has worked the old capital for generations.
Everything else that may enter is in a list of five paragraphs. Residents' own vehicles, ambulances, fire-fighting and police vehicles, hearses with one funeral car, bridal cars, and a doctor's car on a call inside Mdina have complete access at all times. Commercial vehicles delivering or selling goods may circulate for that purpose between 06.00 and 10.30 and between 15.30 and 17.00, every day.
Mini-buses hired to carry children to schools inside Mdina may circulate between 07.30 and 09.00 and between 13.00 and 14.00 on schooldays. Taxis and chauffeur-driven cars may come in and out, without parking, to carry residents to and from hotels and residences.
And a vehicle displaying a Blue Sticker — the disability sign issued by Malta's National Commission Persons with Disability, or any internationally recognised equivalent — may circulate at all times and park in specific reserved areas, whatever the nationality of its owner.
Anything else needs a temporary permit from the Mdina Local Council, applied for in writing on a form printed in the regulations themselves, for a stated reason and a stated period, on payment of a 2.33 euro administration fee.
The permit is signed by the Mayor and the Executive Secretary, must be displayed inside the vehicle so that it can be read from outside, lasts no more than twelve months and cannot be transferred to another person or another vehicle. For a visitor the practical consequence is simple and worth knowing before the drive rather than at the gate: you park outside the walls and walk in.