VacationSelector

Cologne 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, 2 points apart

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families 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.

CologneFlorence
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Florence are level on 0.
CologneFlorence
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km400
Coast distance256 km78 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 13 points.13
CologneFlorence
Score7259
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,299
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3515
Museums & heritage. Florence leads by 22 points.22
CologneFlorence
Score6082
Museums within 10 km47132
Museums within 2 km of centre2793
Share of museums within 2 km %5770
Unesco sites within 50 km34
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 8 points.8
CologneFlorence
Score6456
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107818
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727599
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6673
Nightclubs within 4 km9034
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 33 points.33
CologneFlorence
Score7138
Protected land share 50 km %539
Landscape blanket share 50 km %522
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares86 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 20 points.20
CologneFlorence
Score7252
Tourist attractions within 2 km4330
Park area within 2 km118 hectares86 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km60
Sights concentration. Florence leads by 22 points.22
CologneFlorence
Score5375
Notable places within 2 km81292
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Florence leads by 8 points.8
CologneFlorence
Score6068
Price level global75.964.9
Daily budget€163€155
Year-round weather. Florence leads by 8 points.8
CologneFlorence
Score6068
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C10.8 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Florence
11
12
16
20
24
29
32
33
27
22
16
11
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Florence
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Florence
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
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. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Florence: 1995-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Firenze / Peretola (5.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneFlorence
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 5 m
€180-199
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
BLQ · 85 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 40 m
€143-159
FLR · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 85 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
TiranaTIA
2 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 70 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
€113-168
FLR · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
€185-255
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 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 2026-09 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

MeasureCologneFlorence
Official languageGermanItalian
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
Elevation59 m50 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsFlorence Airport, Peretola (FLR)6 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneFlorence
City population1,024,621360,930
People per km²2,5303,528
Museums within 10 km40140
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km34
Distinct cuisines in the centre8462

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne 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. 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.