Avignon or Interlaken?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.
Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.
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 the trip is about museums, walkable heritage and day trips, or if you are bringing children: it has the denser centre, the wider choice of places to eat and 4 theme parks within reach.
Choose Interlaken if you want lake swimming and a mountain summer rather than sightseeing, with 12 beaches nearby and a July high of 24°C, in a town that stays quiet.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Avignon and Interlaken are level on 0.
| Avignon | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 1 | 12 |
| Coast distance | 55 km | 713 km |
| Water distance | — | — |
Places to eat. Avignon leads by 15 points.15
| Avignon | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 44 | 29 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 336 | 118 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 18 | 17 |
Museums & heritage. Avignon leads by 32 points.32
| Avignon | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 23 |
| Museums within 10 km | 17 | 5 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 16 | 2 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 94 | 40 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 6 | 2 |
Nightlife. Avignon leads by 12 points.12
| Avignon | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 16 | 4 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 115 | 42 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 97 | 38 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 84 | 90 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 4 | 3 |
Nature & day trips. Avignon leads by 17 points.17
| Avignon | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 44 | 27 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 36 | 19 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 31 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 23 hectares | 5 hectares |
Good for families. Avignon leads by 28 points.28
| Avignon | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 42 | 14 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 15 | 11 |
| Park area within 2 km | 23 hectares | 5 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 4 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Avignon leads by 18 points.18
| Avignon | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 22 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 40 | 14 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Avignon leads by 27 points.27
| Avignon | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 62 | 35 |
| Price level global | 73.7 | 110.5 |
| Daily budget | €160 | €248 |
Year-round weather. Avignon leads by 13 points.13
| Avignon | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 70 | 57 |
| Monthly daytime high | 11.2 °C to 31.2 °C | 2.8 °C to 23.6 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 34 mm to 111 mm | 34 mm to 68 mm |
| Dry months | 2 | 3 |
Where they differ
Avignon has about three times as many museums as Interlaken, and 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Interlaken's 2, with museums and notable places packed tightly around the centre. It also has about three times as many restaurants near the centre, 4 theme parks within reach where Interlaken has none, far more park space and a larger share of protected land.
Interlaken's edge is the water: 12 beaches nearby against Avignon's 1, and its driest stretch falls in spring rather than in midsummer.
Where they are alike
Neither city is a swimming destination in the sea sense: no month brings water at 21°C or more, and neither trip turns on a coast.
After dark both are quiet, with what drinking places there are clustered near the centre in each, Avignon simply having more of them. Their kitchens cover a similar range of cuisines too, and in both cases eating and drinking sit within walking distance of the middle.
Which traveller are you?
Anyone travelling for museums and heritage should take Avignon: about three times as many museums, 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and enough of them close together to cover on foot in a day.
Families are better served in Avignon too, with 4 theme parks within reach where Interlaken has none, more attractions near the centre, and far more park space for the gaps between them.
Walkers and lake swimmers come out ahead in Interlaken, with 12 beaches nearby against Avignon's 1, and a town rather than a small city around them, best used in high summer.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €160 and €248, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels rather than measurements of either city. A single heavily visited town can sit further from its own country's average than the two countries sit from each other, so use them only as a frame.
No weather station near Interlaken records sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low, and its monthly ratings rest on temperature and rainfall alone. Avignon's warm season also runs straight into a wet autumn, 111mm in September, which a summer-focused reading hides.
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). Interlaken: 2005-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Meiringen / Unterbach (19.3 km from centre).
Avignon peaks in late spring: May at 24°C and June at 28°C, with rain around 44-58mm. July and August reach 31°C. Autumn turns wet, September at 111mm and November at 97mm.
Interlaken is a summer proposition, June to August at 22-24°C, though July and August are also its wettest months at around 60mm. Its driest stretch is March and April at 34-37mm, when highs reach only 9-15°C, and winter sits at 3-5°C.
Getting there
| Flying from | Avignon | Interlaken |
|---|---|---|
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 25 m €110-119 MRS · 65 km | 1 h 15 m €163-196 ZRH · 100 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 55 m €219-245 1 stop MRS · 65 km | 2 h 45 m €110-133 ZRH · 100 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 45 m no fares FNI · 38 km | 1 h 35 m €110-163 ZRH · 100 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 50 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 1 h 25 m €234-276 ZRH · 100 km |
| MadridMAD | 1 h 35 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 2 h 5 m €158-220 1 stop ZRH · 100 km |
| LisbonLIS | 2 h 10 m €136-184 1 stop MRS · 65 km | 2 h 40 m €188-233 ZRH · 100 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 35 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 1 h 0 m no fares ZRH · 100 km |
| NantesNTE | 1 h 30 m €72-162 MRS · 65 km | 1 h 20 m no fares GVA · 143 km |
| MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX | 7 h 45 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 7 h 45 m no fares ZRH · 100 km |
| SeoulICN, GMP | 11 h 35 m no fares MRS · 65 km | 10 h 55 m no fares ZRH · 100 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 | Interlaken |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | 571 m |
| Main airport | Marseille Provence Airport (MRS)65 km from centre125 non-stop destinations | Zürich Airport (ZRH)100 km from centre181 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 11 days | 10 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Avignon | Interlaken |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 92,188 | 6,123 |
| People per km² | 1,420 | 1,424 |
| Museums within 10 km | 11 | 3 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 6 | 2 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 36 | 22 |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Avignon or Interlaken somewhere new.