VacationSelector

Avignon or Lyon?

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

Your match

Avignon
41
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather with your weighting.

Lyon
✓ Best match
52
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 Lyon if you plan your days around eating and evenings out: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, and far more bars and clubs, plus more to see within walking distance.

Choose Avignon if you want a warmer year, with highs reaching 31°C in July, and open country within reach, 36% of the surrounding land being protected.

Scoreboard

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

AvignonLyon
Beaches & swimming. Avignon and Lyon are level on 0.
AvignonLyon
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km126
Coast distance55 km253 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 35 points.35
AvignonLyon
Score4479
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3361,691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1840
Museums & heritage. Avignon and Lyon are level on 55.
AvignonLyon
Score5555
Museums within 10 km1753
Museums within 2 km of centre1625
Share of museums within 2 km %9447
Unesco sites within 50 km62
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 42 points.42
AvignonLyon
Score1658
Drinking venues within 4 km115866
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre97611
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8471
Nightclubs within 4 km447
Nature & day trips. Avignon leads by 11 points.11
AvignonLyon
Score4433
Protected land share 50 km %366
Landscape blanket share 50 km %316
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km23 hectares120 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 17 points.17
AvignonLyon
Score4259
Tourist attractions within 2 km1525
Park area within 2 km23 hectares120 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Lyon leads by 14 points.14
AvignonLyon
Score4054
Notable places within 2 km4086
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Avignon and Lyon are level on 62.
AvignonLyon
Score6262
Price level global73.773.7
Daily budget€160€160
Year-round weather. Avignon leads by 6 points.6
AvignonLyon
Score7064
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 31.2 °C7 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 111 mm43 mm to 101 mm
Dry months20
0255075100

Where they differ

Lyon is much stronger for eating and evenings out: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs. It also has about twice as many notable places within walking distance, twice as many attractions and far more park space.

Avignon answers with open country: 36% of the land around it is protected against 6% around Lyon, and it has 4 theme parks within reach against Lyon's 2. It also runs warmer through the year, 11-31°C against 7-28°C.

Where they are alike

Museums and heritage come out level for different reasons. Lyon has roughly three times as many museums; Avignon has 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Lyon's 2, and its museums sit tightly around the centre.

Neither is a swimming destination: no month brings sea at 21°C or more, so water is not the reason to choose between them. Both also run the same shape of year, best at the height of summer and cool at either end.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling to eat and drink should take Lyon: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs, nearly all within reach on foot.

Travellers with a car and an interest in landscape and heritage should base themselves in Avignon: 36% of the surrounding land is protected against 6% around Lyon, and 6 UNESCO-listed places lie within day-trip reach.

Families are better served in Lyon, with about twice as many attractions near the centre and far more park space, though Avignon holds 4 theme parks within reach against Lyon's 2.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information: it is a national price level, identical for both by construction. The €160 daily budget beside it is one national estimate, not a measurement of either city, so it cannot tell you which trip will cost more.

Lyon's higher beach count is also misleading: no month brings sea at 21°C or more, so it is not swimming weather. And Avignon's strongest-looking autumn is wet, 111mm in September, which is a different thing from a warm month.

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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Avignon
65
40
44
64
58
44
34
47
111
90
97
57
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Daylight, hours per day
Avignon
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Avignon
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Avignon: 1991-2020 normals, Nimes / Courbessac (34 km from centre). Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

May and June are Avignon's best window, with highs of 24-28°C and 44-58mm of rain, dry enough for long days outdoors. September stays warm but is the wettest month at 111mm, so autumn walking is a gamble.

Lyon peaks later, June to August, when highs reach 26-28°C; rain sits at 66-73mm through those months, heavier than Avignon's summer. In winter Lyon is the colder option at 7-9°C against Avignon's 11-13°C, which makes Avignon the better off-season choice.

Getting there

Flying fromAvignonLyon
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 65 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 65 km
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
NantesNTE
1 h 30 m
€72-162
MRS · 65 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
AlgiersALG
1 h 35 m
€100-103
MRS · 65 km
1 h 50 m
€110-175
LYS · 20 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
FNI · 38 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
TunisTUN
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 65 km
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 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

MeasureAvignonLyon
Official languageFrenchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation10 m160 m
Main airportMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)65 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAvignonLyon
City population92,188519,127
People per km²1,42010,838
Museums within 10 km1142
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km62
Distinct cuisines in the centre36148

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Avignon or Lyon 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.