ZTL Urbino

The whole walled town is the zone

There is no partial version here. The restriction takes in the entire historic centre inside the walls, which is a UNESCO-listed Renaissance townscape and one of the few in Italy to have been left substantially as it was. The Comune writes the rule as openings rather than closures, and they are short: on weekdays only, the town admits traffic 08:30–10:30 and 18:00–20:00 from 1 May to 31 October, and 08:30–10:30 and 18:00–24:00 from 1 November to 30 April. On Sundays and public holidays it does not open at all.

Which gate you use matters. Gate 1 on via Matteotti is excluded from the morning window and from the summer evening one, opening only on winter evenings; gates 2 (via delle Mura), 3 (Porta Santa Lucia) and 4 (Piazzale Roma, by via Raffaello) carry the rest. So an opening you have read about may not be an opening at the gate in front of you, and the seasonal variation is set locally rather than following any national pattern with the season.

That mixture is the thing to watch. A gate that was open when you arrived in March may not be in August, and the seasonal variation is set locally rather than following any national pattern. The safe reading is that the walled town is closed to you unless you have specific reason to believe otherwise.

Borgo Mercatale and the lift

Urbino solved this problem long before ZTLs existed. Borgo Mercatale, the open space below the walls on the eastern side, is the town's main car park, and from it a lift rises inside the rock to emerge near the Palazzo Ducale at the top of the town.

It takes a couple of minutes and it delivers you to the part of Urbino you came to see, which is at the summit of a hill you would otherwise be walking up. Park at Mercatale, take the lift, and the question of driving into the centre never arises. This is the answer for almost every visitor.

Staying inside the walls

Accommodation inside the historic centre can normally register your plate with the Comune for the nights you are there, which allows you to drive in to reach the property and unload. Arrange it when you book rather than on arrival — the camera record is checked automatically, so it cannot be sorted out at the desk afterwards.

Be specific about dates and about the vehicle. If you change cars at the rental counter, the plate on the list is the wrong one and the authorisation is worth nothing.

A town with two populations

Urbino has a large university relative to its size, and the town runs on two rhythms as a result: term time, when the walled centre is full of students and the bars stay busy late, and the summer, when the students leave and the visitors arrive. Parking pressure at Mercatale follows both.

Raphael was born here, in a house on the steep Via Raffaello that is now a museum, and the town treats that connection seriously. Like everything else worth seeing in Urbino, it is inside the walls and reached on foot.