VacationSelector

Avignon or Lucerne?

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

Your match

Avignon
✓ Best match
41
match

Wins on value for money and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Lucerne
33
match

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 heritage: daytime highs reach 31°C, 6 UNESCO-listed places sit within day-trip reach, and much of the surrounding land is protected.

Choose Lucerne if you prefer cooler summers around 24°C, more museums in town and more to do after dark, and you are content with rain in most months of the year.

Scoreboard

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

AvignonLucerne
Beaches & swimming. Avignon and Lucerne are level on 0.
AvignonLucerne
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km116
Coast distance55 km669 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Lucerne leads by 3 points.3
AvignonLucerne
Score4447
Restaurants within 2 km of centre336269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1825
Museums & heritage. Avignon leads by 15 points.15
AvignonLucerne
Score5540
Museums within 10 km1723
Museums within 2 km of centre1613
Share of museums within 2 km %9457
Unesco sites within 50 km61
Nightlife. Lucerne leads by 12 points.12
AvignonLucerne
Score1628
Drinking venues within 4 km115202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre97151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8475
Nightclubs within 4 km411
Nature & day trips. Avignon leads by 19 points.19
AvignonLucerne
Score4425
Protected land share 50 km %367
Landscape blanket share 50 km %310
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km23 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Avignon leads by 4 points.4
AvignonLucerne
Score4238
Tourist attractions within 2 km1515
Park area within 2 km23 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Avignon leads by 5 points.5
AvignonLucerne
Score4035
Notable places within 2 km4029
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Avignon leads by 27 points.27
AvignonLucerne
Score6235
Price level global73.7110.5
Daily budget€160€248
Year-round weather. Avignon leads by 17 points.17
AvignonLucerne
Score7053
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 31.2 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 111 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months20
0255075100

Where they differ

Avignon runs warmer, with highs of 11-31°C against Lucerne's 4-24°C, and its driest months are drier than anything Lucerne gets. The land around it is far more protected, 36% against 7%, it has 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Lucerne's 1, and more notable places within walking distance.

Lucerne has notably more places to drink and more nightclubs, most of them central, plus somewhat more museums and a wider range of kitchens. The national budget estimate is €248 a day for Switzerland against €160 for France.

Where they are alike

Neither is a place to build a swimming holiday around. Neither reaches a month of water at 21°C or more, so any bathing is incidental to the trip rather than the reason for it.

Eating out and sightseeing land in much the same place. Avignon has somewhat more restaurants near the centre, Lucerne a wider range of kitchens, and both hold roughly the same number of tourist attractions in a compact, walkable core.

Which traveller are you?

Walkers and day-trippers: Avignon. 36% of the land around it is protected against 7% around Lucerne, and 6 UNESCO-listed places sit within day-trip reach, which gives more reason to leave town.

Families: Avignon again, on 4 theme parks within reach against Lucerne's 1, and a similar number of attractions near the centre. Lucerne answers with more park space close to town.

Anyone out in the evening: Lucerne, with more places to drink, more nightclubs and a wider spread of kitchens. Avignon has more restaurants near its centre but a quieter night.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €160 and €248, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of Avignon or Lucerne. A heavily visited city can sit well away from its own country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so treat them as background rather than as what either trip will cost.

Warm months are not dry months. Avignon's heat arrives just before its wettest stretch, 111mm in September, and Lucerne's warmest weeks are also its rainiest. Lucerne has more nearby beaches in the data, but no month reaches 21°C of water at either place.

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
Avignon
11
13
17
19
24
28
31
31
26
21
15
12
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Avignon
65
40
44
64
58
44
34
47
111
90
97
57
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Avignon
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Avignon
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Avignon: 1991-2020 normals, Nimes / Courbessac (34 km from centre). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Avignon is at its best in May and June, with highs of 24-28°C and rain of 44-58mm. July and August are hotter, at 31°C, and drier, 34-47mm. From September the rain arrives, 111mm, and autumn stays wet.

Lucerne's warmest stretch is July and August at 24°C, but those are also among its wettest months, 119-126mm. September is drier at 87mm and still 19°C, which makes it the steadier choice. Winter highs sit near 4°C.

Getting there

Flying fromAvignonLucerne
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 65 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 65 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
FNI · 38 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 65 km
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 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

MeasureAvignonLucerne
Official languageFrenchFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation10 m436 m
Main airportMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)65 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureAvignonLucerne
City population92,18886,234
People per km²1,4202,963
Museums within 10 km1114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km61
Distinct cuisines in the centre3646

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Avignon or Lucerne 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.