VacationSelector

Avignon or Monaco?

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 museums & heritage and nightlife with your weighting.

Monaco
✓ Best match
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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 Avignon if you want a heritage trip on foot with countryside around it: more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, museums set tightly around the centre, and more protected land nearby. Swimming is not part of the offer.

Choose Monaco if the sea matters: 50 beaches nearby, four months of water at 21°C or more, and far more to see within walking distance of the centre.

Scoreboard

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

AvignonMonaco
Beaches & swimming. Monaco leads by 73 points.73
AvignonMonaco
Score073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km150
Coast distance55 km0 km
Water distance—0 km
Places to eat. Avignon leads by 5 points.5
AvignonMonaco
Score4439
Restaurants within 2 km of centre336269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1816
Museums & heritage. Avignon leads by 17 points.17
AvignonMonaco
Score5538
Museums within 10 km1723
Museums within 2 km of centre168
Share of museums within 2 km %9435
Unesco sites within 50 km62
Nightlife. Avignon leads by 8 points.8
AvignonMonaco
Score168
Drinking venues within 4 km11569
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre9763
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8491
Nightclubs within 4 km47
Nature & day trips. Monaco leads by 9 points.9
AvignonMonaco
Score4453
Protected land share 50 km %3624
Landscape blanket share 50 km %3117
Land share of disc %10054
Park area within 2 km23 hectares15 hectares
Good for families. Avignon leads by 7 points.7
AvignonMonaco
Score4235
Tourist attractions within 2 km1514
Park area within 2 km23 hectares15 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km43
Sights concentration. Monaco leads by 24 points.24
AvignonMonaco
Score4064
Notable places within 2 km40154
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for moneyNo source publishes a price level for Monaco.
Year-round weather. Monaco leads by 4 points.4
AvignonMonaco
Score7074
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 31.2 °C13.3 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 111 mm13 mm to 138 mm
Dry months23
0255075100

Where they differ

Avignon's strength is heritage with reach: 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip range against Monaco's 2, and its museums sit tightly around the centre, so a short stay on foot covers most of them.

Monaco has the coast: 50 beaches nearby against Avignon's 1, and 4 months of sea at 21°C or more where Avignon has none. It also packs about three times as many notable places into walking distance of the centre, and holds somewhat more museums.

Where they are alike

Both are warm-weather cities across the year, Avignon at 11-31°C and Monaco at 13-28°C, with mild winters, long sunshine and no month that is genuinely cold.

They also converge on eating out, families and going out after dark: a similar range of kitchens, about as many tourist attractions near the centre in each, and limited nightlife where, in both, the bars and clubs sit close to the centre rather than scattered.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling with children: Avignon has about twice as much park space near the centre and 4 theme parks within reach against Monaco's 3, with similar numbers of attractions. Monaco leads only if the trip is built around swimming.

A heritage traveller: Avignon, with 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach and 36% of the surrounding land protected against 24%, suits walking days in town followed by trips out.

A short-break visitor with two days and no car: Monaco, where roughly three times as many notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, and the beaches fall inside that same short radius.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The data gives Avignon a daily budget of about €160 but carries no equivalent figure for Monaco, so nothing on this page tells you what the trip costs there, in either direction.

The beach figures count what is nearby rather than what sits inside the city, and the months when the sea is warmest are the months everyone else picks. Read the weather the same way: Avignon's summer highs of 31°C arrive without a coast to cool off in, and both cities take their heaviest rain in autumn, when prices and crowds are otherwise easiest.

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
Monaco
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Avignon
No coastline within reach
Monaco
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Avignon
65
40
44
64
58
44
34
47
111
90
97
57
Monaco
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Daylight, hours per day
Avignon
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Monaco
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Avignon
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
Monaco
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Avignon: 1991-2020 normals, Nimes / Courbessac (34 km from centre). Monaco: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (19.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Late spring suits Avignon best: May and June bring highs of 24-28°C with moderate rain, and the country around it is open. Midsummer climbs to 31°C with no sea to retreat to, and September turns wet at 111mm.

Monaco's window is July and August: highs of 28°C, sea at 24-25°C and rain down to 13-18mm, the driest stretch of its year. Late autumn is the trade-off, when it takes noticeably heavier rain than Avignon.

Getting there

Flying fromAvignonMonaco
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 65 km
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
FNI · 38 km
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 18 km
NantesNTE
1 h 30 m
€72-162
MRS · 65 km
1 h 35 m
€129-163
NCE · 18 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
NCE · 18 km
TunisTUN
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 35 m
€148-281
NCE · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 65 km
2 h 45 m
€202-329
NCE · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 25 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 10 m
€69-133
NCE · 18 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 50 m
€170-248
NCE · 18 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
7 h 55 m
no fares
NCE · 18 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

MeasureAvignonMonaco
Official languageFrenchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCEF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation10 m68 m
Main airportMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)65 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)18 km from centre129 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureAvignonMonaco
City population92,18838,857
People per km²1,42018,503
Museums within 10 km1114
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km62
Distinct cuisines in the centre3629
Swim season, months above 21 °C–4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Avignon or Monaco 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.