How the hours are read, and the sources

The tool answers one question: on this date and at this time, is this limited-traffic zone active? To do so it uses three things: the zone’s restricted periods, transcribed from the city’s official source; the calendar of Italian public holidays; and the suspensions stated by the source. Every timetable sits in a single data file (ztl.json), with the source address and its date; no hours are written into the program code. Today the file holds 7 cities and 26 zones.

1. How we transcribe a timetable

Each period is written as weekdays, a start time and an end time. If the end time is equal to or earlier than the start time, the period ends the next day: “Friday from 23:00 to 3:00” lasts until 3:00 on Saturday. A period may apply only in some months (Trastevere and San Lorenzo on Wednesday and Thursday from May to October, Palermo with separate summer and winter calendars) or in a period worked out each year, such as Florence’s summer night ZTL, from the first Thursday of April to the first Sunday of October. Adjacent or overlapping periods are merged: in Florence, in summer, Friday’s day and night periods form a single ban from 7:30 to 3:00.

2. Public holidays and suspensions

Italian public holidays are the ten fixed-date ones plus Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, computed for each year. For every zone we record what the source says: “holidays excluded”, “holidays included”, or nothing. When the source is silent and the day is a holiday, the tool treats the zone as active and says so. Each city’s patron saint day is not computed. Suspensions carry the source’s dates: August for Rome’s Historic Centre night ZTL and San Lorenzo, 10 to 23 August 2026 for Turin’s ZTL Centrale.

3. Cities left out

For the collection we looked for the official pages of about thirty provincial capitals. We left out cities whose page publishes hours only inside a map, a permit PDF or an order several years old with no more recent confirmation, and those whose page could not be reached. For Bologna the source is the description of the open-data set, updated in 2021; for Florence, the Servizi alla Strada page from 2023: we say so next to the result.

4. The fine

Unauthorised entry into a ZTL is punished by article 7, paragraph 14 with a sum of €83 to €332; in the charging zone (Area C) paragraph 14-bis adds the day’s charge; bans by emission class (paragraph 13-bis) cost €168 to €678. Article 198, paragraph 2-bis counts one fine per calendar day in the same zone when entries are recorded by cameras. Payment reduced by 30% within 5 days and the minimum within 60 (article 202), half the maximum after 60 days without an appeal (article 203). Texts read on Normattiva on 13 November 2026. Notification costs are not included: each authority sets them and they are on the notice.

Limits

The tool does not know about one-off closures for events, roadworks, football matches or demonstrations, nor about an individual vehicle’s permits: it says whether the zone is active, not whether you may enter. It does not read gate status in real time: no city publishes it in an open format. The time is your device’s clock converted to Rome time.

Tests and updates

Every build checks dozens of cases: each city’s period boundaries, periods crossing midnight, Easter and holidays, August suspensions, Florence’s summer period, the fine amounts and deadlines. A mismatch blocks publication. Sources are read again by hand; report an error to contatti@ztlorari.it.