VacationSelector

Annecy or Milan?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Annecy
34
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Milan
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Annecy if you want somewhere small, a town of 132,000, where the restaurants and bars you will use sit near the centre and the water is close.

Choose Milan if you want museums, eating out, nightlife and things to do with children in quantity, packed within walking distance of the centre, plus slightly warmer weather through the year, up to 29°C in July.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AnnecyMilan
Beaches & swimming. Annecy and Milan are level on 0.
AnnecyMilan
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km94
Coast distance260 km120 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Milan leads by 24 points.24
AnnecyMilan
Score4670
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3431,991
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2020
Museums & heritage. Milan leads by 44 points.44
AnnecyMilan
Score3074
Museums within 10 km987
Museums within 2 km of centre555
Share of museums within 2 km %5663
Unesco sites within 50 km24
Nightlife. Milan leads by 55 points.55
AnnecyMilan
Score2075
Drinking venues within 4 km1402,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre120961
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8643
Nightclubs within 4 km670
Nature & day trips. Milan leads by 29 points.29
AnnecyMilan
Score3665
Protected land share 50 km %2030
Landscape blanket share 50 km %1911
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km48 hectares102 hectares
Good for families. Milan leads by 48 points.48
AnnecyMilan
Score2977
Tourist attractions within 2 km476
Park area within 2 km48 hectares102 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km35
Sights concentration. Milan leads by 51 points.51
AnnecyMilan
Score2374
Notable places within 2 km15266
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Milan leads by 6 points.6
AnnecyMilan
Score6268
Price level global73.764.9
Daily budget€160€155
Year-round weather. Milan leads by 5 points.5
AnnecyMilan
Score5964
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C7 °C to 28.6 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 mm44 mm to 127 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Annecy is the smaller proposition, and what nightlife it has sits almost entirely near the centre, so an evening out needs no planning. It has 9 places to swim close by against Milan's 4.

Milan has many times as many museums, restaurants, bars and clubs, and far more notable places within walking distance of the centre. For families it offers about twice as much central park space, 5 theme parks within reach against 3, and many more attractions near the centre.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination: neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more, and what swimming there is only makes sense in high summer.

Their weather runs on the same calendar, warmest in July and coolest in January, with a similar amount of sunshine over the year and no month either can call dry. The national price levels behind them are close too, €160 for France and €155 for Italy.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling for museums and old buildings should go to Milan: many times as many museums as Annecy, grouped tightly around the centre, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2.

Families are better served in Milan as well, with far more attractions near the centre, about twice as much park space there, and 5 theme parks within reach against Annecy's 3.

If you are travelling to walk, swim and eat without a plan, Annecy suits better: 9 places to swim nearby, a compact centre, and a quiet evening scene rather than a large one.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget is a national estimate, the price level for restaurants and hotels in France and Italy rather than a measurement of either city. The two national figures sit close together, and a heavily visited city can sit further from its own country average than that gap, so neither tells you what a day will actually cost.

Counts can flatter, too. Annecy has 9 places to swim nearby, but neither city has a month of sea at 21°C or more, so swimming depends on a warm spell. And only about half of Milan's drinking places sit near the centre, so its nightlife means moving around.

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Annecy
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Milan
7
10
15
17
23
26
29
28
24
18
11
7
Rainfall, mm
Annecy
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Milan
54
44
50
78
102
75
57
83
116
113
127
49
Daylight, hours per day
Annecy
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Milan
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Annecy
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2
Milan
3
4
5
6
7
7
9
8
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Annecy: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (39 km from centre). Milan: 1991-2020 normals, Novara / Cameri (41.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Annecy is at its best in July and August, when highs reach 26-27°C, and it holds warmth into September at 21°C. Through late spring and early autumn it is also the drier of the two, at 77-87mm a month.

Milan is the stronger choice either side of summer, warmer by March at 15°C, and its winter months are the driest either city offers, though still not dry. The trade is autumn: October and November bring 113-127mm, well above what falls in Annecy at the same time.

Getting there

Flying fromAnnecyMilan
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 38 km
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 38 km
1 h 20 m
€46-63
MXP · 40 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 38 km
1 h 30 m
€34-53
MXP · 40 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 40 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 38 km
2 h 35 m
€78-142
MXP · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 38 km
1 h 40 m
€129-158
LIN · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€147-338
GVA · 38 km
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 40 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 38 km
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 40 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
10 h 10 m
€710-815
1 stop
MXP · 40 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureAnnecyMilan
Official languageFrenchItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation418 m138 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)38 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)40 km from centre203 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAnnecyMilan
City population132,1171,354,196
People per km²1,9757,453
Museums within 10 km187
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Distinct cuisines in the centre4479

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Annecy or Milan somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.