An aire is a designated stopover for motorhomes. The full French name, aire de services pour camping-cars, is more useful than the short one, because it tells you what the place is for: services, and a night’s parking.

The word changes as you cross borders. In Germany it is a Stellplatz, in Italy an area di sosta or just a sosta, in Spain an área de autocaravanas. The idea travels better than the vocabulary does.

What you actually find

Most aires are a leveled bit of ground with marked bays, a drinking water tap, and a drain in the ground for emptying waste tanks. Some add electrical hook-ups. Many add nothing at all. There is usually no reception, no barrier and nobody to ask, because the model assumes you know what you are doing.

The service pillar is called a borne. It is a waist-high post or cabinet that dispenses drinking water and sometimes electricity, and it sits next to or over a drain grating for gray water. A separate, smaller point takes the contents of a chemical toilet. At Anor, in the Nord, the commune describes its borne as handling waste water, chemical toilet emptying and drinking water in one place, which is the normal arrangement.

Aire vs Stellplatz vs sosta vs área de autocaravanas

The four words describe the same physical thing and four different legal settings. This matters more than the vocabulary, because what you are allowed to do once parked is set by national law and then narrowed by the town.

France: the aire. French communes built the model, and it is the densest network. Most aires are municipal. The mayor is the authority: under article L2213-2 of the Code général des collectivités territoriales, a mayor may, by arrêté motivé and on grounds of traffic or environmental protection, ban access to certain roads at certain times, reserve access to categories of vehicle, and regulate stopping and parking. That single article is why the rules change every time you cross a commune boundary.

Germany: the Stellplatz. Usually run by the Stadt or Gemeinde under a written Benutzungsordnung, a rules-of-use document the town publishes. These are worth reading because they are specific. Coesfeld’s, for example, caps a stay at 7 days, makes parking itself free, charges for electricity and fresh water through coin machines, lets you use the disposal point for nothing, and forbids pitching tents or awnings (“Es ist untersagt, Zelte oder Vorzelte auf oder im Umfeld des Stellplatzes aufzustellen”). One town’s rules are not Germany’s rules, but the format is standard: find the Benutzungsordnung, and you have the answer.

Italy: the area di sosta. Italy has something France does not, a national article that defines the line. Article 185 of the Codice della Strada says that parking an autocaravan where parking is permitted does not constitute camping so long as the vehicle rests on the ground only through its wheels, emits no discharge other than the engine’s, and does not occupy more road surface than its own footprint. The same article prohibits emptying organic residues or waste water anywhere except a proper sanitary disposal installation, with an administrative fine of 87 to 344 euros. It also permits a surcharge on paid parking for autocaravans over the car rate in the same zone.

Spain: the área de autocaravanas. The Dirección General de Tráfico takes the same approach as Italy and states it plainly. An autocaravana is estacionada, parked, when it sits in an authorized place within the markings, and it does not stop being parked just because people are inside. It becomes acampada, camping, when the activity extends beyond the vehicle through things the DGT lists as tenderetes, toldos, dispositivos de nivelación, soportes de estabilización. Camping is only allowed in zones set aside for it. The DGT updated its instruction on motorhomes, PROT 2026/04, on 16 March 2026, and its announcement notes that municipalities keep the power to set parking time limits and to restrict or prohibit camping in urban areas by ordinance.

The pattern across all four: parking is broadly legal, camping is not, and the difference is whether anything is sticking out of your vehicle.

How you actually pay and use one

Assume there is nobody there. That is the single most useful thing to know. There is rarely a warden, an office, or a person to ask, and the machine will not explain itself.

Jetons. A jeton is a plastic or metal token that runs the borne. You buy it somewhere else in town, before you get to the aire, and often during business hours only. Bénéjacq sells its jetons at the mairie or at the shops on the Place de la Fontaine. Anor sells them at the tourist office, a Carrefour Contact and a bar-tabac. If you roll in at 8pm on a Sunday, you may have water in the tap and no way to turn it on. Carry a small stock of coins and expect that jetons are not interchangeable between towns.

Cards and barriers. Larger and busier aires run on an automated terminal. Hendaye’s municipal aire takes bank cards at a payment terminal and gives you a code for the barrier, with tariffs stepped by length of stay. The barrier is worth thinking about before you commit: an automated aire will hold your vehicle behind a gate, and if the machine will not read your card you have a problem at both ends.

Free to park, paid for services. This is very common and it is the shape that catches people out. Anor charges nothing to park and only sells tokens for the borne. Coesfeld does the same thing in Germany. So “free aire” often means free parking plus 2 euros for 100 liters of water, and a listing that says “free” is not telling you the whole cost.

Height barriers. Many aires and many ordinary car parks in France are gated by a horizontal height bar. The clearance is posted on the bar itself, and there is no national standard behind it, so the number on that bar is the only one that counts. Measure your own vehicle to the top of whatever is actually up there, write it in meters where the driver can see it, and read every entrance sign rather than judging by eye. This is a mistake you make once and pay for permanently.

How long you can stay. There is no European norm, and the widely repeated “24 to 48 hours” is a habit rather than a rule. Bénéjacq’s page says 48 hours. Hendaye’s arrêté says 72, and calls anything longer an unlawful occupation. Coesfeld’s Benutzungsordnung says 7 days. The French legal backstop sits in article R417-12 of the Code de la route: leaving a vehicle at the same point on the public highway continuously for more than 7 days is stationnement abusif, as is a shorter period if the authority with police powers has fixed one, and it carries a second-class fine and the possibility of immobilization or removal. So the commune’s sign is the operative number, and the 7 days is the outer edge, not the allowance.

What an aire is NOT

It is not a campsite. A campsite sells you a pitch and expects you to settle in. An aire sells you a night and expects you to leave in the morning. Awnings, chairs, tables, windbreaks and washing lines belong at the first and not the second. This is not only etiquette. As above, Italy and Spain both define the parking-versus-camping boundary by whether anything extends past the vehicle, and Coesfeld bans awnings in writing.

It is not a place for a tent. Aires are for vehicles you sleep in. If you are in a tent, what you want is a campsite or, where the law allows it, a legal bivouac. In France, the Code de l’urbanisme allows camping outside a developed site with the landholder’s agreement, but explicitly outside the roads and public ways, which is exactly what an aire is. A mayor or the local planning document can also ban camping in defined zones, and that ban only bites once it has been posted at the mairie and signposted at the usual access points to the area. Read our France bivouac rules page before you rely on any of this.

It is not a right to stay. An aire exists because a commune decided to build one, and the same authority that opened it can restrict it. The mayor’s power under L2213-2 runs both ways. In 2020 the ministry answering a written question in the Sénat confirmed the shape of it: a restriction on motorhome parking has to rest on a reasoned arrêté citing real grounds, such as obstruction caused by vehicle size, public health and safety, or protection of the environment, and, exceptional local circumstances aside, it cannot be general and absolute across every road in the commune. That is a genuine limit on what a town can do. It is not a guarantee that any particular aire will be open when you get there. Hendaye’s own rules reserve the right to close the site for safety reasons.

It is not permanent. Aires close for winter, for roadworks, for a village fête, and sometimes for good. Check the commune’s own page or call the mairie before you build a day around one, and keep a second option inside an hour’s drive. That is cheap insurance in October and essential in January.

Why they exist

Because a passing motorhome spends money in the bakery, the bar and the supermarket even when it pays nothing to sleep. French communes worked this out first and built aires as tourist infrastructure. Once you see them that way, the etiquette makes sense: you are a guest of the town, for one night.

The sign wins

Everything above describes the general shape. The posted sign at the entrance and the commune’s current arrêté beat this page, beat any app, and beat what was true last season. If the sign says 24 hours and this page says 48, the sign is right. If a barrier has gone up, the barrier is right. Read the panel before you unclip your seatbelt, and if there is no panel, take the shortest reading: one night, arrive late, leave early.

Sources

  1. Article L2213-2, Code général des collectivités territoriales, Légifrance
  2. Article R417-12, Code de la route, Légifrance
  3. Articles R111-32 à R111-35, Code de l'urbanisme (Camping), Légifrance
  4. Question écrite n° 14376 et réponse du ministère de la Cohésion des territoires, Sénat, 2020
  5. Borne camping-car, Commune de Bénéjacq
  6. Notre aire d'accueil de camping-car, Ville d'Anor
  7. Arrêté du règlement intérieur de l'accueil des camping-cars, Ville d'Hendaye
  8. Benutzungsordnung Wohnmobilstellplatz, Stadt Coesfeld
  9. Articolo 185, Codice della Strada (Circolazione e sosta delle autocaravan), ACI
  10. Con caravana, remolque o autocaravana, Dirección General de Tráfico
  11. Tráfico actualiza la Instrucción de autocaravanas (PROT 2026/04), Dirección General de Tráfico
  12. OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0

Where the original is not in English, the summary above is ours and the linked text is the authority.