VacationSelector

Bilbao or Florence?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Florence
55
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

Scoreboard

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

BilbaoFlorence
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 31 points.31
BilbaoFlorence
Score310
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km10
Coast distance0 km78 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Bilbao leads by 3 points.3
BilbaoFlorence
Score6259
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8401,299
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2615
Museums & heritage. Florence leads by 44 points.44
BilbaoFlorence
Score3882
Museums within 10 km25132
Museums within 2 km of centre1293
Share of museums within 2 km %4870
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Bilbao leads by 2 points.2
BilbaoFlorence
Score5856
Drinking venues within 4 km869818
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730599
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8473
Nightclubs within 4 km5034
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 15 points.15
BilbaoFlorence
Score5338
Protected land share 50 km %119
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %70100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares86 hectares
Good for families. Florence leads by 5 points.5
BilbaoFlorence
Score4752
Tourist attractions within 2 km1730
Park area within 2 km119 hectares86 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Florence leads by 23 points.23
BilbaoFlorence
Score5275
Notable places within 2 km79292
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 3 points.3
BilbaoFlorence
Score7168
Price level global60.864.9
Daily budget€122€155
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 2 points.2
BilbaoFlorence
Score7068
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C10.8 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm32 mm to 132 mm
Dry months02
0255075100

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
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Florence
11
12
16
20
24
29
32
33
27
22
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Florence
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Florence
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Florence
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Florence
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Florence: 1995-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Firenze / Peretola (5.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoFlorence
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
1 h 35 m
€113-168
FLR · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
1 h 40 m
€143-159
FLR · 6 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
2 h 5 m
€180-199
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 55 m
€232-255
2 stops
FLR · 6 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
TiranaTIA
2 h 55 m
no fares
SDR · 74 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 70 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 10 m
€77-99
BIO · 5 km
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
PSA · 70 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

MeasureBilbaoFlorence
Official languageSpanishItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation19 m50 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsFlorence Airport, Peretola (FLR)6 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoFlorence
City population351,124360,930
People per km²8,4403,528
Museums within 10 km17140
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre5462
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bilbao or Florence 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.