VacationSelector

Avignon or Zurich?

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 value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

Zurich
✓ Best match
44
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 a base for heritage day trips: highs reach 31°C in July, more of the land around it is protected, and its listed sites sit within easy reach.

Choose Zurich if the trip is about eating out and going out. It has far more restaurants, bars and clubs, and more to see on foot from the centre, though summer is cooler and wetter.

Scoreboard

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

AvignonZurich
Beaches & swimming. Avignon and Zurich are level on 0.
AvignonZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km123
Coast distance55 km632 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 23 points.23
AvignonZurich
Score4467
Restaurants within 2 km of centre336974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1830
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 1 points.1
AvignonZurich
Score5556
Museums within 10 km1776
Museums within 2 km of centre1637
Share of museums within 2 km %9449
Unesco sites within 50 km61
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 38 points.38
AvignonZurich
Score1654
Drinking venues within 4 km115676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre97553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8482
Nightclubs within 4 km474
Nature & day trips. Avignon leads by 7 points.7
AvignonZurich
Score4437
Protected land share 50 km %3616
Landscape blanket share 50 km %319
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km23 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Avignon leads by 6 points.6
AvignonZurich
Score4236
Tourist attractions within 2 km158
Park area within 2 km23 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 19 points.19
AvignonZurich
Score4059
Notable places within 2 km40119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Avignon leads by 27 points.27
AvignonZurich
Score6235
Price level global73.7110.5
Daily budget€160€248
Year-round weather. Avignon leads by 17 points.17
AvignonZurich
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 through the year, with daytime highs of 11-31°C against Zurich's 4-24°C, and it has dry months where Zurich has none. It has 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Zurich's 1, and more protected countryside. The national price estimate for its country is lower, at €160 a day against €248.

Zurich has around three times as many restaurants near the centre, a far wider spread of kitchens, and many more bars and clubs, plus three times as many notable places within walking distance.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination. Both sit inland, with no month of sea at 21°C or more, so swimming is not the reason to go; Zurich has more beaches within reach, Avignon 1.

Their heritage offering lands in much the same place by different routes: many more museums in Zurich, a tighter cluster in Avignon. Both suit families only moderately, and both put green space within reach, Zurich through parks near the centre, Avignon through protected land beyond it.

Which traveller are you?

Someone travelling to eat and drink well should take Zurich. It has roughly three times as many restaurants near the centre, a far wider spread of kitchens, and many more bars and clubs, most of them central.

A traveller who wants heritage and countryside is better served by Avignon: 6 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Zurich's 1, museums clustered tightly around the centre, and a much larger share of protected land nearby.

Families lean to Avignon, with about twice as many attractions near the centre and 4 theme parks within reach against Zurich's 2, though Zurich answers with roughly twice the park space close to the centre.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €160 and €248, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of either city. Neither number can see how far a large, heavily visited city sits from its own country's average, and that distance can be wider than the gap between the two figures.

Avignon's warmth reads well as an annual range, but high summer at 31°C is hot for walking a compact centre, and its driest months fall in that heat while autumn turns wet. Zurich's beach count says nothing about water warm enough to swim in; neither city offers a swimming season.

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
Zurich
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
Zurich
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
Zurich
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
Zurich
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). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Avignon is at its best from May into June, with highs of 24-28°C and rain around 44-58mm. High summer is hotter and drier still, though September turns heavy at 111mm and the autumn stays that way.

Zurich's warmest stretch is July and August, at 24°C, but those months are also its wettest, around 126mm, so plan for rain even at the peak. Winter is the weakest window, with daytime highs of 4°C.

Getting there

Flying fromAvignonZurich
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 65 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 65 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
FNI · 38 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 65 km
2 h 40 m
€188-233
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
NantesNTE
1 h 30 m
€72-162
MRS · 65 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SXB · 146 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 65 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 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

MeasureAvignonZurich
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 m408 m
Main airportMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)65 km from centre125 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureAvignonZurich
City population92,188452,421
People per km²1,4205,147
Museums within 10 km1163
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km61
Distinct cuisines in the centre3678

Where else could you go?

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