Permit for Driving

Lisa, There are two different aspects to your question. To begin with, each driver will require the compulsory International Driver's Permit for driving in Italy. This must be used in conjunction with your home D.L. Failure to produce an I.D.P. if requested can result in fines on the spot! You can obtain I.D.P.'s at any CAA office. There appears to be three offices in Hamilton. Check This link for details. Two Passport-style photos are required, but those can usually be provided at the office where you obtain the I.D.P. The whole process only takes about 15-minutes and about $25. The other part of your question refers to the Zona Traffico Limitato (ZTL) areas which are becoming increasingly prevalent in many Italian towns and cities. In some cases, these are enforced by automated Cameras, with each pass through a Camera resulting in a €100+ ticket. Drivers don't learn that they've violated these zones until several months after they've returned home. In other cases, the local Police will write a ticket. As a previous reply mentioned, even though Hotels are supposed to "register" the license plates of guests with the local authorities, the comments I've seen here indicate this isn't always done. You may find it helpful to look at This Website. Especially for driving in Italy, a GPS along with a good Map would be a really good idea. Some roads are not well marked. One caveat though - don't trust GPS units implicitly, as they do make mistakes. I always "double-check" against road signs and landmarks. Happy travels!

Permit may be the wrong word. There is the International Driver Permit that you can get from AAA in the US, not sure about Canada, that is a translation of your driver license that many rental companies require and the police could ask you for if you are stopped for any reason. Then there are ZTL zones in many towns that if you drive through them without the proper permission could result in a ticket in the mail anywhere up to 2 years after you trip. There are photo cameras that catch the plates of all cars going through those zones. For the ZTL in Florence, your hotel needs to register the plate numbers of your rental car for the zone you may pass through to help you avoid those tickets. HOWEVER, if you go through anywhere but a specific path to your hotel (which is easy to do with wrong turns and one way streets) you could still end up with a ticket or worse, multiple tickets. Many of the smaller towns have ZTLs now as well as the larger cities, make sure you know where you want to park for each location to avoid hitting those. I would suggest arranging your travel to make sure about where you need a rental car and where you don't and turn the car in before getting to the larger cities where you likely won't use it much anyway.

Keep it simple. It is called TLZ - traffic limited zones. You CANNOT get a permits for these zones in advance. IF your hotel is within one of these zones, in theory, and like all theories it has some holes in it, your hotel is suppose to register your vehicle with the local police so that the ticket generated by the automatic camera is canceled. Have been many reports of this not working very well. With the Italian bureaucracy it takes about a year for the 100E plus fine ticket to show up in your mailbox. Try fighting a year old traffic ticket. As discussed above the International Driving Permit is a different issue and is required in Italy.

Does anybody know how long the international driving permit is good for? I have one but it is 2 years old (and of course I'm not even sure I can find it). Thanks,
Darrel

1 year

One tip I would add to the ZTL story is that you should keep your Italian hotel receipts for at least a year. If your hotel messes up and fails to register your rental car plate number with the police, you may not receive your ZTL ticket until as much as a year later. (By Italian law they have up to a year.) If you still have your hotel receipt, you can use it to protest your ticket. Be sure to notify your hotel of your rental car license number before you enter the city where it's located. The cameras take a picture of the license plate of every car entering a ZTL. Then the computer (or a human?) compares the plates to the "pass" list. If your plate is on the pass list, no ticket.