Parking in Dubrovnik: garages, street zones, and getting to the Old Town without parking

Parking is the reason many visitors decide not to drive in Dubrovnik at all. The Old Town inside the walls is car-free, the streets around it are a camera-controlled traffic zone for seven months of the year, and the spaces closest to the gates are the dearest on the coast. Outside the centre it is easier: Gruž, Lapad, the port, Cavtat and the airport all have ordinary parking at ordinary prices.

This guide goes from the walls outwards, with every 2026 price from the operator that sets it, and ends with the alternative: arriving with a driver and not parking at all. The Dubrovnik Tourist Board puts it plainly: driving in the city “can be challenging due to limited parking”.

The short version

The Old Town traffic zone

The special traffic regime zone was introduced by a City Council decision of 9 May 2024 and first came into force on 2 June 2025. Since an amendment of February 2026 it runs every year from 1 April to 31 October. It covers the streets around the Old Town, from Ilijina glavica along Zagrebačka ulica to Viktorija and from Pile to Boninovo, and a camera system reads the plate of every car that enters. Passes are electronic and tied to the plate, so nothing is shown on the windscreen.

A visitor’s car may come in only with access arranged in advance, the Tourist Board’s guide to vehicle access explains: a pre-booked space at the Pile or cable-car car park, private accommodation with a parking or garage space whose host has registered the plate, or a stay at a hotel inside the zone. Hosts may register only as many plates as they have spaces, before the guest arrives or within three days of arrival. Vehicles with seven or eight passenger seats may stop in the zone only in a slot booked through the City’s Bus Web Shop.

Driving in without authorisation is fined €260 for a private individual under the City of Dubrovnik’s rules; since February 2025 a first offence may be dealt with by a written warning instead. Rental cars are a special case, because the fine goes to the car’s owner: under a City decision of 5 May 2026, a rental company that identifies the renter within three days is fined €260 instead of the standard company fine. The European Consumer Centre Germany adds that a Croatian fine falls to two-thirds if it is paid within eight days of being served.

The zone has had an effect. In its first season the City counted 291,587 fewer vehicle passages than a year earlier, and from April to June 2026 another 190,657 fewer entries than in the same months of 2025.

The Ilijina glavica garage

For most visitors with a car, this is the answer. The public garage on Zagrebačka ulica, run by Best in Parking, is outside the restricted zone, so no permit is needed. It has 711 spaces and four charging points for electric cars, and it is open 24 hours a day.

• Prices: €7.00 an hour, €6.00 with the Bmove app, and each started hour is charged; a 24-hour ticket costs €40 and must be bought within 15 minutes of entering. A lost ticket costs €450.
• Height: the entrance is 2.10 m high, worth checking if you drive a van or carry a roof box.
• Walk: Pile Gate is about 590 m away on foot, roughly eight minutes, downhill on the way in.

Zone 0: Pile and the cable car

The two car parks closest to the Old Town, at Pile (Iza Grada) and the lower platform of the cable car, are “zone 0”: they are inside the traffic zone, so a space must be reserved online before you drive in. From May to October they cost €20 for the first hour and €250 a day; from November to April, €5 and €51, according to Sanitat Dubrovnik, which may add a 10% handling fee to a reservation.

Your booked slot is also your permission to enter the zone: you may drive in no more than 20 minutes before it starts and must leave within 20 minutes after it ends. For a quick drop-off of luggage at an Old Town apartment this can work; for a whole day it is the most expensive parking in the city.

Street parking zones

Sanitat runs the street parking across the city in numbered zones:

• Zone 2, the streets around the Old Town, including Zagrebačka ulica, Petra Krešimira IV., Frana Supila, Iza Grada and Branitelja Dubrovnika, is reserved for residents with a permit at all hours.
• Zones 1 and 3, in Gruž and Lapad, cost €1.30 an hour from March to November and €0.70 from December to February, charged every day from 06:00 to 22:00; a zone 3 day ticket costs €17.30.
• Zone 5, the Gospino polje car park on Liechtensteinov put, costs €1.30 an hour or €20.80 a day from March to November, and €0.70 or €11.20 in winter. It is about 2.1 km on foot from Pile Gate, and bus line 9 stops there.

Parking at the port and at the airport

At the Gruž ferry and cruise port, Luka Dubrovnik charges €3.00 an hour or €30 a day from 1 May to 30 September and €1.50 or €15 the rest of the year in its car parks A and B, with 77 and 113 spaces. From 1 January 2027 the prices rise to €4.00 and €40 in summer and €2.00 and €20 otherwise.

At Dubrovnik Airport, short-stay parking in P1, P2 and P5 costs €4.00 for 10 minutes to an hour and €8.00 for up to two hours from 1 May to 31 October, and €3.00 and €6.00 from 1 November to 30 April. The long-stay car park P10 costs €13 a day in summer and €8 in winter; you pay at the machines by the exit ramps, in cash or by card, and a lost ticket costs €150.

Staying in Lapad, Babin Kuk or Cavtat

Outside the centre the traffic zone does not apply and street parking costs a fraction of the Pile prices. The question is whether to drive into the Old Town at all. From Uvala Lapad it is about 4.4 km by road to Pile Gate and from Babin Kuk about 6 km, but Libertas line 6 runs 90 times a day from Babin Kuk to Pile and line 4 runs 71 times a day from Hotel Palace in Lapad, so for an evening in the Old Town the bus usually wins. From Cavtat, line 10 runs 38 times a day each way for €4.

Not parking at all

The simplest way round the zone is to arrive with a driver. A car with a driver sets you down at the nearest point the vehicle may stop, usually the drop-off area at Pile, about 115 m from the gate, and collects you there again, so there is no garage ticket, no zone permission and no fine to worry about. Our Old Town page lists the drop-off points and walking times, and the price list shows what a ride costs from the airport, the port or Cavtat.

• Check where a satnav sends you. If you do drive, a navigation app does not know whether you have a permit, so look at the route before following it to an Old Town address.
• Keep the receipts. A garage receipt or a booking confirmation is the quickest way to answer a fine notice.
• Tell your host the plate early. If your accommodation has a space inside the zone, the plate must be registered before you arrive or within three days.