VacationSelector

Brussels or Milan?

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

Your match

Brussels
56
match

Wins on places to eat and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Milan
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families 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.

BrusselsMilan
Beaches & swimming. Brussels and Milan are level on 0.
BrusselsMilan
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km04
Coast distance56 km120 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Brussels leads by 11 points.11
BrusselsMilan
Score8170
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7791,991
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4420
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 6 points.6
BrusselsMilan
Score8074
Museums within 10 km12087
Museums within 2 km of centre5955
Share of museums within 2 km %4963
Unesco sites within 50 km104
Nightlife. Milan leads by 7 points.7
BrusselsMilan
Score6875
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4142,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre862961
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6143
Nightclubs within 4 km8470
Nature & day trips. Milan leads by 34 points.34
BrusselsMilan
Score3165
Protected land share 50 km %630
Landscape blanket share 50 km %111
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km65 hectares102 hectares
Good for families. Milan leads by 21 points.21
BrusselsMilan
Score5677
Tourist attractions within 2 km2876
Park area within 2 km65 hectares102 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km25
Sights concentration. Milan leads by 1 points.1
BrusselsMilan
Score7374
Notable places within 2 km254266
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Milan leads by 8 points.8
BrusselsMilan
Score6068
Price level global76.264.9
Daily budget€180€155
Year-round weather. Milan leads by 7 points.7
BrusselsMilan
Score5764
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C7 °C to 28.6 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm44 mm to 127 mm
Dry months00
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
Brussels
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
6
Milan
7
10
15
17
23
26
29
28
24
18
11
7
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Milan
54
44
50
78
102
75
57
83
116
113
127
49
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Milan
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
Milan
3
4
5
6
7
7
9
8
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). Milan: 1991-2020 normals, Novara / Cameri (41.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsMilan
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
1 h 30 m
€34-53
MXP · 40 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 40 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
1 h 15 m
€116-135
LIN · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 40 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 11 km
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 40 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 11 km
2 h 35 m
€78-142
MXP · 40 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 40 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
10 h 10 m
€710-815
1 stop
MXP · 40 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
11 h 50 m
€1,114-1167
2 stops
MXP · 40 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

MeasureBrusselsMilan
Official languageFrench, German, DutchItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation70 m138 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)40 km from centre203 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsMilan
City population195,5461,354,196
People per km²5,9087,453
Museums within 10 km10587
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km104
Distinct cuisines in the centre10979

Where else could you go?

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