Avignon or Geneva?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.
Wins on nightlife and places to eat 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 Avignon if you want warmth and sun for walking a compact centre, with heritage close at hand and UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach; daytime highs run 11-31°C across the year.
Choose Geneva if the trip is built around eating out and evenings, with far more restaurants, bars and clubs, and more parks and central attractions if you are travelling with children.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Avignon and Geneva are level on 0.
| Avignon | Geneva | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 1 | 43 |
| Coast distance | 55 km | 279 km |
| Water distance | — | — |
Places to eat. Geneva leads by 26 points.26
| Avignon | Geneva | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 44 | 70 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 336 | 1,028 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 18 | 35 |
Museums & heritage. Avignon leads by 3 points.3
| Avignon | Geneva | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 52 |
| Museums within 10 km | 17 | 35 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 16 | 20 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 94 | 57 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 6 | 2 |
Nightlife. Geneva leads by 34 points.34
| Avignon | Geneva | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 16 | 50 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 115 | 549 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 97 | 427 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 84 | 78 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 4 | 60 |
Nature & day trips. Geneva leads by 15 points.15
| Avignon | Geneva | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 44 | 59 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 36 | 27 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 31 | 21 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 23 hectares | 182 hectares |
Good for families. Geneva leads by 23 points.23
| Avignon | Geneva | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 42 | 65 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 15 | 28 |
| Park area within 2 km | 23 hectares | 182 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 4 | 2 |
Sights concentration. Geneva leads by 16 points.16
| Avignon | Geneva | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 56 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 40 | 99 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Avignon leads by 27 points.27
| Avignon | Geneva | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 62 | 35 |
| Price level global | 73.7 | 110.5 |
| Daily budget | €160 | €248 |
Year-round weather. Avignon leads by 11 points.11
| Avignon | Geneva | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 70 | 59 |
| Monthly daytime high | 11.2 °C to 31.2 °C | 5.1 °C to 26.8 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 34 mm to 111 mm | 55 mm to 94 mm |
| Dry months | 2 | 0 |
Where they differ
Avignon runs warmer, 11-31°C against Geneva's 5-27°C, and unlike Geneva it gets months at 40mm of rain or less. More of the land around it is protected, and it has 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Geneva's 2. The national daily estimate is €160 for France, €248 for Switzerland.
Geneva has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider spread of kitchens, many times as many bars and clubs, and a denser cluster of notable places within walking distance of the centre.
Where they are alike
Neither is a swimming destination. Avignon has 1 beach nearby and Geneva 43, but no month brings water to 21°C or more, so swimming is incidental rather than a reason to go.
Museums and heritage land close: Geneva has more museums, while Avignon's cluster more tightly around the centre and are backed by more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach. Both also sit beside protected countryside, 36% of the land around Avignon and 27% around Geneva.
Which traveller are you?
Eating and evenings: Geneva. It has about three times as many restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs, nearly all of them close in.
Families: mostly Geneva, with roughly twice as many attractions near the centre and far more park space within walking reach. Avignon answers with 4 theme parks within reach against Geneva's 2.
Heritage and day trips: Avignon. Its museums sit tightly around the centre, 6 UNESCO-listed places lie within day-trip reach, and 36% of the surrounding land is protected, on warmer and sunnier days.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €160 and €248, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels in France and Switzerland, not measurements of either city. A much-visited city can sit far from its own national average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so they cannot tell you which trip costs more.
Geneva's 43 nearby beaches read like a swimming trip, but neither place has a month of water at 21°C or more. And Avignon's warmth cuts both ways: its driest month is also its hottest, and its warm early autumn is its wettest stretch.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Avignon: 1991-2020 normals, Nimes / Courbessac (34 km from centre). Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre).
Avignon's best stretch runs May to July: highs of 24-31°C, with rain easing to 34mm in July, its driest month. September stays warm at 26°C but is the wettest, at 111mm, and October and November stay heavy.
Geneva is a June to August trip, highs of 24-27°C. Rain barely varies there, 77-81mm across those months and never below 55mm in any month, so its warmest weeks are also among its wettest. December and January hold at 5-6°C.
Getting there
| Flying from | Avignon | Geneva |
|---|---|---|
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 25 m €110-119 MRS · 65 km | 1 h 10 m €104-203 GVA · 5 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 45 m no fares FNI · 38 km | 1 h 35 m €91-200 GVA · 5 km |
| LisbonLIS | 2 h 10 m €136-184 1 stop MRS · 65 km | 2 h 25 m €156-181 1 stop GVA · 5 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 50 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 1 h 30 m €160-186 GVA · 5 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 55 m €219-245 1 stop MRS · 65 km | 2 h 55 m €147-338 GVA · 5 km |
| MadridMAD | 1 h 35 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 1 h 50 m no fares GVA · 5 km |
| NantesNTE | 1 h 30 m €72-162 MRS · 65 km | 1 h 20 m no fares GVA · 5 km |
| BordeauxBOD | 1 h 15 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 1 h 20 m no fares GVA · 5 km |
| PortoOPO | 2 h 0 m no fares FNI · 38 km | 2 h 10 m €127-171 1 stop GVA · 5 km |
| MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX | 7 h 45 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 7 h 35 m no fares GVA · 5 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
| Measure | Avignon | Geneva |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | French | French, German, Italian, Romansh |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Swiss Franc (CHF) |
| Sockets | CE230 V, 50 Hz | CJ230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 10 m | 403 m |
| Main airport | Marseille Provence Airport (MRS)65 km from centre125 non-stop destinations | Geneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 11 days | 9 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Avignon | Geneva |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 92,188 | 209,061 |
| People per km² | 1,420 | 13,148 |
| Museums within 10 km | 11 | 35 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 6 | 2 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 36 | 80 |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Avignon or Geneva somewhere new.