Mdina, Malta · Limited traffic zone
Official name Mdina (Restriction of Access and Transit of Vehicles) Regulations, S.L. 65.27
In force in Mdina right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 11:04 · Europe/Malta
This encoding says the ban is in force, not that you are inside it. We hold no boundary: the regulations name the area as 'any street or square inside Mdina' and name no street, so the warning is at city level.
The prohibition never lifts. If your vehicle is not one of the classes regulation 3 exempts, there is no hour at which you may drive in, and the only route in is a temporary permit granted in advance by the Mdina Local Council for a stated reason.
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, but only 'on schooldays'. The regulations do not define a schoolday and we hold no Maltese school calendar, so that exception is deliberately not encoded here.
Taxis and chauffeur-driven cars are exempt only for a specific errand — carrying residents to and from hotels and residences in Mdina, without parking — not as a vehicle class. A taxi carrying a visitor sightseeing is not within that exception on the face of the regulations.
The karrozzin, the horse-drawn cab, is written into the prohibition itself as the one thing it does not reach.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
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.
Leġiżlazzjoni Malta (legislation.mt), the Office of the State Advocate's official consolidated-legislation service — the entry for Subsidiary Legislation 65.27, Mdina (Restriction of Access and Transit of Vehicles) Regulations. This is the page that states the instrument exists under that title and is one of the consolidated laws of Malta; the consolidated text itself is the PDF cited on the other fields
There is no charge, because entry is not for sale. These regulations create a prohibition and a list of exceptions, not a tariff: no vehicle may enter at any price, and the classes that may enter pay nothing for the privilege. Money appears once, and it is a fee for handling an application rather than a charge for driving.
Regulation 4(2) requires an application for a temporary permit to be made in writing on the form in the Schedule 'following the payment to the Mdina Local Council of an administration fee of two euros and thirty-three cents (2.33) for each application'.
That is paid whether or not the permit is granted, it is charged per application rather than per day or per entry, and the council grants the permit 'for a specific purpose or reason under such conditions as the Mdina Local Council may deem proper to impose' — so it is not something a driver can simply buy. Recording 2.33 euro as a daily charge would tell a driver that Mdina has a price, and it does not.
There are none: the ban is continuous. Regulation 2 states that no vehicle other than a karrozzin shall have access to any street or square inside Mdina 'nor circulate within that city at any time', and no later provision opens a window in it — the regulations name no night, no weekend and no season. What does carry clock times is the exception list, and only for two of its five paragraphs.
Commercial vehicles delivering or selling goods within Mdina may circulate for those purposes 'between 6.00a.m. and 10.30a.m. and between 3.30p.m. and 5.00p.m. on all days'.
Mini-buses hired for the conveyance of children attending schools within Mdina may circulate 'between 7.30a.m. and 9.00a.m. and between 1.00p.m.and 2.00p.m. on schooldays'.
The other three exceptions have no hours at all: residents' vehicles, emergency and funeral vehicles, bridal cars and doctors on call have 'complete access and transit therein at all times'; a vehicle displaying a Blue Sticker may circulate and park in reserved areas at all times; and taxis and chauffeur-driven cars may come and go, without parking, to carry residents to and from hotels and residences, with no time limit stated.
The word 'schooldays' is the one term in this timetable that the regulations do not define and this record will not guess at.
Leġiżlazzjoni Malta — the consolidated text of S.L. 65.27, regulation 2 for the continuous prohibition and regulation 3(a) to (e) for the exceptions and the two sets of hours inside them (regulation 3 as amended by Legal Notice 329 of 2005)
The whole of the walled city, stated as such rather than drawn. Regulation 2 reaches 'any street or square inside Mdina' and circulation 'within that city', and the regulations name no street, no gate and no boundary line anywhere in their three pages — there is no schedule of roads and no map, only the city as a unit.
That is a smaller claim than it sounds, because Mdina is a small walled town on a hilltop and its boundary is the fortification: the regulations can afford to name the city and nothing else in a way that a rule about a district of a large city could not.
The one geographic distinction the text does make is between being inside and being outside, and it makes it twice — the delivery and school exceptions are permissions to circulate 'within Mdina', and the taxi exception is a permission to carry residents 'to and from hotels and residences in Mdina', which is a movement across the line rather than a licence to stay inside it.
Rabat, the town immediately outside the walls, is a different locality and is not in these regulations at all.
Leġiżlazzjoni Malta — the consolidated text of S.L. 65.27, regulations 2 and 3. The instrument contains no schedule of streets and no plan; its only schedule is the application form for a temporary permit
There is no emission test here, and there could not be: the regulations bar every vehicle rather than a class of vehicle. No Euro standard, fuel type, emission class, windscreen label or vehicle age appears anywhere in S.L. 65.27 or in its two amendments, and an electric car is as prohibited as a 1990 petrol one.
What decides a case is who is driving and why — a resident, an ambulance, a hearse, a doctor on a call, a delivery in the morning window, a Blue Sticker — and, failing all of those, whether the Mdina Local Council has granted a temporary permit for the specific reason stated on the application form. Not estimated.
There is no diesel test either, for the same reason: this is a prohibition on vehicles as such, not on engines. A modern diesel delivery van may enter between 06.00 and 10.30 because of what it is doing, not because of what it emits, and the same van is barred at 11.00. Not estimated.
These regulations state no penalty. Their three pages create the prohibition, the exceptions, the permit and the application form, and they stop there — there is no fine, no fixed penalty and no enforcement provision in the instrument, so there is no figure to record. That does not mean driving in is free of consequence: S.L.
65.27 is made under the Traffic Regulation Ordinance, Cap. 65, and the general offence and contravention machinery of that Ordinance and of the Traffic Contraventions Ticket regulations sits behind it. This record has not read those, so it names no amount rather than carrying one over from another instrument.
Not estimated.
Leġiżlazzjoni Malta — the consolidated text of S.L. 65.27: regulation 2 for the prohibition and the karrozzin, regulation 3(a) to (e) for the exceptions and their hours, and regulation 4 with the Schedule for the temporary permit, the 2.33 euro administration fee, the signatures, the display requirement and the twelve-month non-transferable limit
Leġiżlazzjoni Malta (legislation.mt) — the consolidated text of Subsidiary Legislation 65.27, Mdina (Restriction of Access and Transit of Vehicles) Regulations, made under the Traffic Regulation Ordinance (Cap. 65). In force since 13 July 2004 as Legal Notice 359 of 2004, and the text states its own amendment chain: 'as amended by Legal Notices 329 of 2005 and 408 of 2007'. Served as PDF from the service's document store; the stable citation for the instrument is the ELI identifier eli/sl/65.27
Leġiżlazzjoni Malta — the ELI entry for S.L. 65.27 in the Office of the State Advocate's consolidated-legislation register. This is the watchable half of the citation above: it states the instrument's type, title and keywords, and the register marks a repealed instrument in both the number and the title — L.S. 65.01 in the same chapter reads 'Imħassrin bl-Avviż Legali 254 tal-2011', and L.S. 65.30 records that it was transposed to Cap. 499 — where S.L. 65.27 carries neither mark
Next scheduled re-check: 2027-03-15.