ZTL Bergamo: Città Alta never opens — and the council tells you which gate to leave by

If the hotel is inside the ZTL, yes — and Bergamo has the clearest scheme in Italy for it. Accommodation inside a restricted zone receives transit permits equal to its number of rooms, and hotels also get transit-and-parking permits on a sliding scale: one for up to 5 rooms, two up to 10, three up to 15, four for more than 15. The cost is trivial: €1.00 a day per plate for transit only, €5.00 with parking. Validity cannot exceed your stay and is capped at 30 days.

No, and this is what makes Bergamo unusually forgiving: the guest's plate can be registered UP TO 72 HOURS AFTER the vehicle actually entered the ZTL — it is written into point 16 of the council's regulation. So you can arrive first and deal with the paperwork at reception. Almost everywhere else in Italy the permit has to exist before you drive through the gate.

Bergamo is one of the very few Italian cities that publishes this, in a table attached to its parking plan covering 499 streets. Out of the Centro Storico of Citta Alta the exit gates are via Porta Dipinta, via Porta Pantano, via Mayr, via San Lorenzo, via Fara and via Maironi da Ponte. Out of the Citta Alta Colli evening and holiday zone, and out of Valverde: via Maironi da Ponte, via Porta Pantano, via San Lorenzo. Out of the permanent via Tasso - piazzetta Santo Spirito - via Pignolo zone: via Pignolo. Three of those names - Porta Dipinta, Porta Pantano and Mayr - appear nowhere in the entry lists, so leaving by whichever street the satnav offers is not following the scheme. Ask the property which gate to use on the way out as well as in.

There are none to wait for. The historic core of the upper town is a permanent ZTL, 00:00 to 24:00, camera-monitored, with seven named gates. The Città Alta e Colli zone is different: public holidays 10:00–24:00 all year, plus Thursday, Friday and Saturday 21:00–01:00 from the Thursday after the clocks go forward to the Saturday before they go back — and when a holiday falls on one of those days, both bands apply.

It is a zone on the way up to Citta Alta that no guidebook mentions, in force since 22 October 2015. On weekdays it is closed 00:00-07:00, then again from 09:30, and from 19:30 to midnight; on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays it is closed around the clock. WHEN IT REOPENS AFTER LUNCH IS DISPUTED BY THE COUNCIL ITSELF: its hours table says 15:45, its own GIS server says 16.00. Treat it as 16:00 - waiting costs you fifteen minutes, guessing wrong costs you a fine. It has two gates, and a rule that exists almost nowhere else: a registered plate may enter and leave ONLY THROUGH THE SAME GATE, and it is not possible to cross the zone in order to reach Citta Alta. Which is exactly what a satnav will try to do.

Possibly not. Point 22 letter E of the council's regulation lets a driver who WAS entitled to enter, but who for reasons of urgency could not notify the plate or obtain the permit in time, stop the penalty process by notifying within 120 HOURS of passing the gate. Note what it requires: the entitlement must have existed. It does not legalise an entry you were never entitled to make — but if the right existed and the paperwork lagged, five days is a real reprieve.

Both, depending on who you are, and they are different deadlines. SEVENTY-TWO HOURS for guests of accommodation, where the property registers the plate, and for people attending a baptism, wedding or funeral inside a ZTL. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY HOURS for disabled badge holders, taxis and licensed private hire, florists, installers and maintenance firms, self-managed removals or bulky deliveries, a replacement vehicle for an existing permit holder, street traders, and commercial loading. Maximum 3.5 tonnes in every case.

Ask the restaurant when you book, because point 18 of the regulation gives them two different schemes. A restaurant in the Citta Alta Colli evening zone that HAS its own private parking spaces gets temporary transit permits equal to the number of spaces it owns, and registers your plate within 72 hours of the car entering. A restaurant WITHOUT private parking, poorly served by public transport, may instead request a temporary transit permit for customers holding a booking, for the time strictly needed to reach the place - and that route runs under point 22, which gives 120 hours. Which answer you get depends on whether the kitchen has a car park behind it.

For transit, yes: point 12 letter H of the regulation lists fully electric vehicles among those that may enter the ZTLs even without a permit. But the plate must still be notified to the camera system, and electric cars are the one exempt category that cannot register permanently: point 22 letter D allows a permanent registration for letters A to G and I, and skips H. So an electric car falls under point 22 letter C and must notify the plate within 120 hours of entering. Free parking on the blue lines is a separate matter and is reserved to electric vehicles belonging to residents of Bergamo.

Not without a permit. Motorcycles and mopeds are exempt in ONE zone only — the evening and holiday ZTL of Città Alta e Colli — and the council states that this excludes the historic centre and the lower-town gates. Everywhere else in Bergamo they need a permit exactly like a car, which is stricter than most Italian cities.

Yes, and by email — which makes Bergamo the easiest city in Italy for this. Download the plate-registration form, fill it in, and send it with a copy of your ID and both sides of your badge to accessi.ztl@atb.bergamo.it. You receive confirmation by email. No SPID and no Italian digital identity are needed, unlike Como or Rome where a foreign visitor cannot apply at all. There is also a second route: the online permits portal issues a temporary permit valid for all gates for up to seven days, renewable, with no fee shown. Up to three vehicles may be associated with a badge. The authorisation covers every ZTL gate in Bergamo except the reserved e-BRT lanes.

Probably not. At the Città Alta and Colli gates access is allowed only to vehicles no more than 3.5 metres high and 10.5 metres long, so a large minibus or camper is barred whatever permit it holds. The council's parking area for oversized vehicles is in via Pietro Spino, available every day except Monday, when the market is held there. And since 3 August 2026 all N1 commercial vehicles are banned from the via Gombito – Piazza Vecchia – via Colleoni axis regardless of fuel, while via Vitali and piazza Duomo are closed to all traffic except emergency vehicles, police, utilities and residents of those two squares.

Everything, because a bollard does not fine you — it stops you. Where a Bergamo gate is guarded by a retractable bollard you need the device that lowers it AND a valid transit authorisation; a permit on its own will not open the road. During the official loading windows the bollards lower automatically. The newest case is via Fornoni, a Zona Scolastica Urbana from 14 September to 31 December 2026, closed to all vehicles in five short bands on weekdays with a bollard at the junction with via Codussi.

No. Since 1 July 2026 the ZTL counter at via Monte Gleno 13 accepts cards and bank cards only. It is also appointment-only, bookable online or by phone on +39 035 236026, pressing 2 — a line open Monday to Saturday from 07:00 to 22:00 and on Sundays and holidays from 09:00 to 19:00.

Only with authorisation: the walled upper town is a permanent restricted zone, 00:00 to 24:00, with no evening or Sunday window. If you are staying up there the hotel can register your plate at €1 a day, and the funicular from the lower town is the answer for everyone else. There is no window to slip through.

The council counts them. Point 17 of the regulation allows a maximum of 2 vehicles for a baptism and 3 for a wedding inside the Centro Storico of Citta Alta; outside the historic centre, communions and confirmations are also capped at 2. The permits are temporary, issued online, and last only for the duration of the ceremony, with plates registered within 72 hours. And of the three wedding cars, only the bride's may stop in front of the church - as a fermata, not a sosta, with a driver sitting in it ready to move it.

Bergamo's parking-plan table gives all 499 streets a parking-area code - A1, A2, A3, B1, C1, C2, CA1, CA2, CL, D1, E1, F1, G1, H1, H2, H3, I1, ZD3, ZD4 and ZD5 - alongside the zone and the gates. A residents' parking permit is tied to that code, which is why a permit for one part of Bergamo does not park you in another. If a host offers you their parking permit, the code decides whether it is any use to you.

Seventy-two, and the distinction that matters is how they are watched. The council's GIS server records 32 as video-monitored and 40 as not. Of the 40, twenty-one have no control device at all - a sign and nothing else, which still makes entering an offence - twelve are direct closures around the Gewiss Stadium used on match days, and seven are retractable bollards, six of them in the Finardi quarter and one in via Don Bepo Vavassori. A camera fines you later; a bollard stops you there and then, on a street with nowhere to turn round.