ZTL zones in Marche

Driving in Marche

The Marche is shaped by its rivers. A dozen of them run more or less parallel from the Apennine watershed down to the Adriatic, and the roads and the towns follow them, so travelling north to south inland means climbing out of one valley and dropping into the next. The region takes longer to cross than its size suggests, and its towns fall into two very different groups.

Thirteen of them restrict their centres, more than any other region in central Italy. On the coast, Pesaro, Senigallia, Porto Recanati, Numana, Gabicce and San Benedetto del Tronto limit traffic in the streets nearest the seafront. Inland, the walled hill towns — Urbino, Recanati, Macerata, Ascoli Piceno, Iesi and Filottrano — restrict the old centre itself, usually a small area inside the gates. Ancona, the regional capital and ferry port, has a zone in its own centre above the harbour. Check the hours listed below for the town you are heading to: coastal restrictions are often seasonal or run in the evenings, while the hill-town zones tend to apply year-round.

Urbino and the walled hill towns

Urbino is the strictest of them and the hardest to approach. The town sits on two steep hills inside its walls, and the Ducal Palace at the top is reached by lanes that were never meant for cars. The usual approach is to leave the car at Borgo Mercatale below the walls and take the lift up into the centre — a journey of a couple of minutes that avoids the zone completely.

Ascoli Piceno, Macerata and Recanati work the same way on a smaller scale: park outside the gate you arrive at, and walk. These centres are compact. Ascoli’s travertine Piazza del Popolo, Recanati’s Leopardi houses and Macerata’s open-air Sferisterio are all within a few hundred metres of the walls, so parking outside costs almost nothing in walking time and removes the risk entirely.

The Conero coast in summer

South of Ancona the Conero headland drops straight into the sea, and the beaches below it — Portonovo above all — are reached by a single narrow road down the cliff. In high season access is capped: parking is paid and limited, and at the busiest times cars are turned back in favour of a shuttle bus. It is not a ZTL, but it catches drivers in exactly the same way, and the answer is the one that works for the hill towns too — park where you are allowed to and cover the last stretch some other way.