ZTL Genoa: ten zones, none of them open — and the 48-hour rule

There are none to wait for. Nine of Genoa's ten restricted zones run 00:00–24:00, every day of the year, and the council states its cameras are active “every day, 0–24, public holidays included”. The single exception is Castelletto, restricted 21:00–06:00 — and Castelletto has quietly dropped off the council's own list of zones. Inside the Centro Storico, via Cairoli and piazza della Meridiana split the day between two regimes: ZTL from 19:00 to 11:30, pedestrian area from 11:30 to 19:00. As verified on 25 October 2026 against the City of Genoa's rulebook of 23 June 2023 and its current ZTL pages.

Usually yes, and Genoa is unusually generous about it. Under category AUT_09c a hotel — or a B&B, guesthouse or other registered non-hotel accommodation — buys annual passes, up to as many as it has rooms, and then notifies your plate to the operator by e-mail or fax up to forty-eight hours AFTER you drove in. Access runs every day, 00:00–24:00. The passes cost the property €27 a year for 1 to 10 rooms, €54 for 11 to 20 and €100 for more than 20, so this is not an expensive thing to ask for. The category is written “for loading and unloading bulky luggage”, which tells you what it is: a route to the door and back out, not a parking permit.

It is the thread running through the whole rulebook, and it is what makes Genoa the most forgiving city on this site. A vehicle that belongs to an authorised category but has not been registered yet can be regularised within forty-eight hours of driving in, on payment of the fee. Accommodation businesses notify a guest's plate within 48 hours. Public garages notify a customer's plate within 48 hours. Businesses inside a zone can ask for an out-of-hours entry up to 48 hours afterwards. Even an urgent derogation can be requested 48 hours after the fact. It does not mean you can drive anywhere you like and sort it out later — you still have to fall inside one of the categories, and somebody still has to do the notifying — but it does mean an honest mistake with a hotel booking is usually recoverable.

Yes, and it is cheap: the garage. Under category AUT_09a a public garage inside the zone can register its customers, every day 00:00–24:00, notifying the plate within the same forty-eight hours. It costs the garage €2.50 per customer per day, or €27 a year up to the number of spaces it has. So if your host cannot help, ask where you are meant to park and then ask that garage directly whether it registers customer plates. A car repair shop can do the same, but only 08:00–19:00 on working days.

Ask, and get the answer in writing. The rulebook's wording is “strutture ricettive alberghiere ed extra-alberghiere” — hotel and non-hotel accommodation businesses — which covers B&Bs, guesthouses and affittacamere. What the rulebook never mentions is a pure holiday let with no services, the kind most often booked through a platform. It is not included and it is not excluded; the document simply does not deal with it. In Verona that same distinction is what shuts guests out, so we are not going to tell you Genoa is different when the council has not said so. Ask your host the direct question: “are you registered as a struttura ricettiva, and will you notify my plate to Genova Parcheggi?”

It is worse than that: the stretch between vico dietro il coro della Maddalena and vico ai Quattro Canti di San Francesco is a permanent pedestrian area, twenty-four hours a day, every day including public holidays, under Ordinanza ORM 471 of 22 June 2022. That is the heart of the Rolli palaces, a UNESCO world heritage site. At the same time via Garibaldi carries the camera gate for Sector 5 of the ZTL. A satnav reads it as a through street and will happily send you down it.

The rules change, and they get stricter. From 19:00 to 11:30 via Cairoli and piazza della Meridiana are Sector 4 of the ZTL, which a permit opens. From 11:30 to 19:00 they are a pedestrian area, and a ZTL permit on its own is no longer enough. Residents and permit holders may enter only to reach a courtyard or garage, or to load and unload, for a maximum of thirty minutes. Taxis and private hire may enter. Guests of accommodation businesses may enter by temporary and occasional derogation, once the property has notified the plate. The two bands meet exactly at 11:30 and 19:00, so there is no moment in the day when the street is simply open.

Yes. The zones run “every day of the year and across the full twenty-four hours”, and the council says the cameras are active every day, 0–24, public holidays included. The pedestrian areas in via Cairoli, piazza della Meridiana and via Garibaldi are explicitly stated to run on working days and holidays alike. There is no Sunday exemption and no August break.

Sixteen are published. Eleven on the Centro Storico — via di Porta Soprana, via del Campo, vico Giannini and piazza della Raibetta for Sector 1; via San Giorgio, vico delle Camelie, Mura delle Grazie and via Ravasco for Sector 2; via Lomellini for Sector 3; via Cairoli for Sector 4; via Garibaldi for Sector 5 — and five more: via del Molo, via Felice Gazzolo at Nervi, via Oberdan at Nervi Centro, via Boccadasse, and via Argonauti / via Chighizola at Vernazzola. Castelletto, Rivarolo, Bolzaneto and Caracciolo have no published camera. That is not the same as no enforcement: the Polizia Locale can and does issue fines on the spot.

The one your permit names. The Centro Storico is divided into five sectors and a permit lets you in only through the gates of its own sector — entering through a different gate is itself a violation. There is a sensible escape clause: if reaching your sector through its own gates turns out to be seriously awkward because of traffic conditions, and would force a long drive inside the zone, you can ask for a substitute sector to be assigned. Sector 1 is the Maddalena and the stretch down to Piazza Caricamento and San Lorenzo; Sector 2 runs from San Lorenzo towards Sarzano and via del Colle; Sector 3 is via Lomellini; Sector 4 is via Cairoli and the lanes above it; Sector 5 is via Garibaldi and the Maddalena side streets.

The council says both. The sector covering via Interiano, piazza delle Fontane Marose, via XXV Aprile and via Roma was created on 6 October 2023 and runs from Friday 20:00 to Sunday 24:00. The council's list of zones calls it “temporarily suspended”, its boundaries page titles it “suspended”, and its Centro Storico page still publishes the hours as though it were running. None of the three carries a date. We are not going to give you a green light on a weekend-night zone in the middle of Genoa on the strength of one word. Treat those four streets as restricted from Friday evening to Sunday midnight, and if you need certainty, ask us and we will call the council.

We do not know, and the honest answer is worth more than a guess. The rulebook approved in July 2023 contains it at paragraph 3.6, restricted 21:00 to 06:00, covering the Spianata di Castelletto, via C. Crosa di Vergagni and via Gaetano Colombo, and the council's printable map draws it. But the council's current list of zones does not mention Castelletto, and neither does its boundaries page. No document says it has been revoked. Since getting this wrong costs a fine and getting it right costs nothing, treat the 21:00–06:00 band as live.

Free, yes — automatic, no. Genoa gives electric vehicles access to every city ZTL, 00:00–24:00, and the annual pass for them costs nothing; electric vehicles are also left out of the counts when tariffs depend on how many vehicles a household has declared. But the pass is compulsory — it is a badge the vehicle has to hold — and access is granted “for the time strictly necessary”. A hire car that has never been registered in Genoa has no badge. Ask the rental company directly; if the answer is no, you are in the same position as a petrol car.

Bicycles, yes, freely, in every zone — the rulebook grants it in plain words. Motorcycles and mopeds are a different matter: they are treated as vehicles and need a permit like anything else, and the resident tariff table has its own column for them. One point worth knowing if you are tempted by the bus lanes: mopeds and two-wheeled motorcycles are banned from the reserved lanes for safety reasons, even when they belong to an otherwise entitled category.

2.10 metres. The council states that permits for the Centro Storico zone are issued only to vehicles whose laden mass does not exceed 3.5 tonnes and whose width does not exceed 2.10 metres. Several ordinary full-size SUVs and vans from the American market are wider than that with the mirrors out. The medieval street widths are the reason, and no category of permit gets round it. The 3.5-tonne limit applies to every permit in the rulebook; the width limit is published for the Centro Storico.

They are the other way to collect a fine, and there are a lot of them. Genoa publishes ninety-two reserved-lane stretches, and fifty-two of them are reserved around the clock; the rest run 06:30–20:00, or 06:30–09:30 with an afternoon band, or 06:30–09:30, or 06:30–09:00. These are main approach roads — via Balbi, corso Buenos Ayres, viale Brigata Bisagno, via Cantore — not back streets. Driving in one without authorisation is sanctioned under article 7 paragraph 14 of the road code, the same article as a ZTL breach. There is no visitor category: the annual permit costs €30 and is for defined professional categories only.

Yes, and we do not describe it, because we have not read the ordinance. The ZTL rulebook states in its opening pages that it does not cover the areas where the most polluting vehicles are banned, which are governed separately by ordinance ODS 59/2023 — the scheme Genoese drivers still call the “ZTL Benzene”, after the 2006 ordinance it replaced. That document sets which emissions classes may not circulate, where and when, and it runs independently and alongside the ZTL rules. If you are driving something older, or a diesel, that is the document to ask about. Ask us and we will find out for your dates.

For the five sectors and the eleven gates, yes — and that is worth something, because the map was made on 5 February 2016 and its sector boundaries and gate list still match the rulebook approved in 2023 word for word. For anything else, no: it predates the Caracciolo zone (2021), Nervi Centro (2023) and the Fontane Marose sector (2023), none of which appear on it. The map also carries the council's own warning, which is worth repeating: the boundaries on it are “purely indicative” and the road signs on the ground are what counts.

That is how these systems work: the camera reads the plate, nobody stops you, and the paperwork follows. The rulebook says so explicitly — the system runs remotely, with no traffic officer present, so the breach is established later and without immediate challenge. A fine should reach an address abroad within 360 days of the violation, and with a hire car the request goes through the rental company, which supplies your details and adds its own administrative charge. You can write to the Prefetto or appeal through the Giudice di Pace. And check the date against the 48-hour rule: if you were a guest of a hotel or a garage customer and nobody notified your plate, the notification was the step that was missed, and that is worth putting in the appeal.

Into the centre, only with a plate on a list. The Centro Storico is restricted around the clock, the lanes are medieval and largely too narrow to drive anyway, and two of the best streets in the city are pedestrian areas rather than ZTLs. The practical answer is the same as in Rome: arrive by taxi — taxis, licensed private hire and car-sharing vehicles enter every zone freely — and if you have hired a car for the Cinque Terre or the Riviera, park it outside and collect it on the way out. If you must bring the car to the door, the route is your host or your garage notifying your plate, and you have forty-eight hours to make that happen.