ZTLs...in France?

Yep— France has its equivalent of Italy’s ZTL’s— in France they are called LTZ’s for “ Limited Traffic Zones “ marked by sign with a red circle on a white background as seen in the photo in the link you included. Enforcement is both by random checks by police and cameras. The Limited Traffic Zones are not yet uniformly present in France; in Paris there is duscussion about waiting until after the 2024 Olympics there to set them up.
Fatigued drivers—- particularly foreign tourists renting cars— are most likely to overlook the LTZ signs which is a strong reason to not take on too much driving in a single day.
Also be vigilant that you’re not speeding on tollroads in France because cameras take photos of vehicle license plates at the beginning and end of
stretches of tollway and if the length is, for example 90 miles, and the cameras have a photo of your car entering the toll road at 10am and completing the route at 11 am, that means you were driving 90mph when the absolute maximum speed limit in France is 81 mph.
In September, my rental car in Spain was equipped with GPS that conveniently indicated when the car was approaching radar. In France, radar detectors and GPS navigators with this feature are illegal and you can be fined up to €1,500 for having one turned on should the police pull you over.

They are extremely rare, hard to miss, and in most cases there would be some sort of retractable bollard. I am not sure that there are any italian-style ZTL like the one planned in Paris.

"Be vigilant that you’re not speeding on tollroads in France because cameras take photos of vehicle license plates at the beginning and end of
stretches of tollway and if the length is, for example 90 miles, and the cameras have a photo of your car entering the toll road at 10am and completing the route at 11 am, that means you were driving 90mph when the absolute maximum speed limit in France is 81 mph"

This is a rumour that's been circulation for years, and isn't true. There are a few average speed camera zones in France, and they are extremely well signposted.

In France, I have gotten a number of tickets by automated speed cameras. We were staying with the guy who is the Chief Road Engineer of Finisterre, and he warned us about the cameras (there is a sign with 3 concentric half-circles to warn you). I got the tickets anyway.

French police now have “ETM” cameras called “New Generation Mobile Cameras” which are mounted inside UNMARKED police cars and use radar to detect speeders and then take video of the offending vehicle.

So much for radar detectors and GPS maps showing speed traps….

Zone Piétonne. Interdit la circulation et au stationnment de 10 a 4 h," which I'm assuming means "Pedestrian Zone, traffic and parking forbidden from 10 am to 4 pm".

It is important that you become familiar with the 24 hour clock which will be on the signs you need to read. In this case you have misread the sign. 4 is 4 am. 4 pm would be indicated as 16. If you thought you could drive in after school lets out you would have a big problem.

If that is what the sign said then they were indicating that vehicles (perhaps delivery trucks etc.,) can only drive or park there from 4 until 10 in the morning.

You will also need to know the abbreviations for the days of the week

We stayed in a village in southern France where cars could drive in only VERY early in the morning till about 10 or 11 and then the bollards came up and no cars were allowed. It is as noted above designed to allow deliveries to be made. Our friend was renovating an apartment and we had to be sure to get materials in before the deadline or have to figure out how to haul them a long way on foot.

All - thanks for the insights offered above.

Yes, I can speak French well enough to understand daily abbreviations, and I get the 24-hour time designations (not my first French rodeo). I know all about speed cameras (it's so thoughtful of European police agencies to warn you, often 2 or 3 times, before you blow through one of them above the speed limit...). I won't be driving after dark so I'm not worried about middle-of-the-night truck deliveries.

What I am more focused on (and what nobody has yet answered) is this: Yes, I understand the sign, but in the event I inadvertently find myself on the wrong side of such a sign, are there automated ZTL cameras-on-a-pole to snap your license plate? Like in Italy (where there definitely are). I'm doubtful that those exist in tiny villages in France (least of all in quiet corners of Corsica, where I'm headed), but I've been surprised in the past about how pervasive such things were even in relatively smallish cities in parts of Italy, so I'm just trying to be prepared.

So...is the ZTL camera-on-a-pole a thing in France?

Thanks.

To date and to my knowledge there is no equivalent in France to the Italian ZTLs. Namely a camera which would automatically trigger a fine if you enter a pedestrian zone.

But from what I have read, a municipal or national police officer can observe the offense via a camera at the time it is committed and fine you. (i.e. he/she is not allowed to rewind the video to see the offense)

But to reassure you :-)) , here are the other situations defined by law where you can be fined via a camera:

No seat belt, use of the telephone, driving on bus lanes, stopping, parking or driving on emergency lanes, failure to respect safety distances between vehicles, crossing and overlapping white lines, failure to stop at a stop sign, exceeding the authorized speed, entering a crossroad if your car risks being immobilized and prevent the passage of cars traveling on other lanes, wearing any sound device (headphones) , registration plate missing or not readable, non-respect of one-way streets, non-respect of priority for pedestrians, U-turn on the highway.

They exist and they suck! I rented a car a few years ago - and it would tell me the speed limit - which I obeyed. Still somehow, somewhere I got a ticket and it arrived in the mail a month or so after the trip. I paid but it will be the last camera ticket I pay if I ever get another one and haven't been speeding! There are those on this forum who feel you must pay these tickets - but they probably never lived in Chicago where they used to mail out tickets without any proof of anything. How do you know the ticket is legit if there is no due process???