Cannes or Siena?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.
Wins on museums & heritage 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.
The verdict
Choose Cannes if swimming shapes the trip: 68 beaches within reach, four months of sea warm enough to be in, and the wider choice of restaurants and late-night places.
Choose Siena if your days are built around museums and heritage, with far more of them and more UNESCO-listed sites within day-trip reach, all packed tightly around a walkable centre.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Cannes leads by 73 points.73
| Cannes | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 73 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 4 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 68 | 0 |
| Coast distance | 1 km | 64 km |
| Water distance | 1 km | — |
Places to eat. Cannes leads by 18 points.18
| Cannes | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 50 | 32 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 473 | 242 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 19 | 11 |
Museums & heritage. Siena leads by 35 points.35
| Cannes | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 36 | 71 |
| Museums within 10 km | 31 | 55 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 5 | 51 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 16 | 93 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 2 | 5 |
Nightlife. Cannes leads by 11 points.11
| Cannes | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 28 | 17 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 188 | 142 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 164 | 119 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 87 | 84 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 19 | 1 |
Nature & day trips. Cannes leads by 14 points.14
| Cannes | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 33 | 19 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 17 | 3 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 16 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 53 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 13 hectares | 29 hectares |
Good for families. Siena leads by 6 points.6
| Cannes | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 25 | 31 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 7 | 13 |
| Park area within 2 km | 13 hectares | 29 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 3 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Cannes leads by 6 points.6
| Cannes | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 56 | 50 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 95 | 69 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Siena leads by 6 points.6
| Cannes | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 62 | 68 |
| Price level global | 73.7 | 64.9 |
| Daily budget | €160 | €155 |
Year-round weather. Cannes leads by 10 points.10
| Cannes | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 74 | 64 |
| Monthly daytime high | 13.3 °C to 27.9 °C | 8.9 °C to 31.3 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 13 mm to 138 mm | 49 mm to 136 mm |
| Dry months | 3 | 0 |
Where they differ
Cannes has 68 beaches nearby where Siena has none, and four months when the sea sits at 21°C or more; Siena has no coast at all. It also has about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, somewhat more places to drink and many times as many nightclubs.
Siena has about twice as many museums, and they sit tightly around the centre. It also counts 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2 from Cannes.
Where they are alike
Both are small cities you can cross on foot, with their notable places clustered close to the centre; Cannes has somewhat more of them within walking distance, but neither asks for much transport.
Neither is built for children in any obvious way: Siena offers roughly twice as much park space and more attractions near the centre, Cannes 3 theme parks within reach. The national estimates behind the two are close too, €160 against €155.
Which traveller are you?
If you plan to swim, Cannes is the only option here: 68 beaches within reach and sea at 25°C in August, where Siena has no coast and no swimming season at all.
For a traveller who wants museums, Siena is the clearer choice, with roughly twice as many and more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, all tightly grouped so days need little travel.
Families split: Cannes has 3 theme parks within reach and the beaches, Siena about twice as much park space and more attractions near the centre. Neither is strongly geared to children.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €160 and €155, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of Cannes or Siena. A visited coastal town can sit well above its own national average, so the small gap between the two settles nothing about what a trip actually costs.
No weather station near Siena reports sunshine hours, so that side of the comparison is simply unmeasured, and its monthly ratings rest on temperature and rainfall alone. Cannes's beach strength also sits in the two months when the town is busiest, and its dry months are exactly those months.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cannes: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (18 km from centre). Siena: 2006-2017 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Arezzo (45 km from centre).
Cannes is at its best in July and August: highs of 28°C, sea at 24-25°C and barely any rain, so the swimming season and the dry season line up. Autumn is the catch, 124mm in October and wetter still after.
Siena suits June, at 28°C, and September, at 26°C, though both carry more rain than a Cannes summer, near 100mm in the latter. Midsummer inland is hot, 31°C, with the year's driest weeks.
Getting there
| Flying from | Cannes | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 30 m €78-111 NCE · 20 km | 1 h 40 m €143-159 FLR · 55 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 55 m €76-223 NCE · 20 km | 2 h 5 m €180-199 1 stop FLR · 55 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 50 m €170-248 NCE · 20 km | 1 h 55 m €232-255 2 stops FLR · 55 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 10 m €69-133 NCE · 20 km | 55 m €136-139 1 stop FLR · 55 km |
| TiranaTIA | 1 h 55 m no fares NCE · 20 km | 1 h 35 m no fares PSA · 86 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 1 h 15 m €83-135 NCE · 20 km | 1 h 35 m €113-168 FLR · 55 km |
| MunichMUC | 1 h 25 m €198-243 1 stop NCE · 20 km | 1 h 15 m no fares FLR · 55 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 30 m €164-246 1 stop NCE · 20 km | 1 h 30 m no fares FLR · 55 km |
| MadridMAD | 1 h 50 m €137-165 NCE · 20 km | 2 h 10 m no fares FLR · 55 km |
| MarrakechRAK | 2 h 55 m no fares NCE · 20 km | 3 h 10 m no fares PSA · 86 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
| Measure | Cannes | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | French | Italian |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CE230 V, 50 Hz | CFL230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 0 m | 322 m |
| Main airport | Nice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)20 km from centre129 non-stop destinations | Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR)55 km from centre36 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 11 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Cannes | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 74,350 | 52,812 |
| People per km² | 3,793 | 446 |
| Museums within 10 km | 16 | 29 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 2 | 5 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 38 | 25 |
| 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 Cannes or Siena somewhere new.