VacationSelector

Cologne or La Spezia?

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

Your match

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on good for families and sights concentration with your weighting.

La Spezia
43
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

CologneLa Spezia
Beaches & swimming. La Spezia leads by 73 points.73
CologneLa Spezia
Score073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km4032
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 41 points.41
CologneLa Spezia
Score7231
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142235
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3511
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 18 points.18
CologneLa Spezia
Score6042
Museums within 10 km4715
Museums within 2 km of centre2710
Share of museums within 2 km %5767
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 40 points.40
CologneLa Spezia
Score6424
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107208
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6685
Nightclubs within 4 km901
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 19 points.19
CologneLa Spezia
Score7152
Protected land share 50 km %5313
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10051
Park area within 2 km118 hectares23 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 52 points.52
CologneLa Spezia
Score7220
Tourist attractions within 2 km433
Park area within 2 km118 hectares23 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km62
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 46 points.46
CologneLa Spezia
Score537
Notable places within 2 km816
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. La Spezia leads by 8 points.8
CologneLa Spezia
Score6068
Price level global75.964.9
Daily budget€163€155
Year-round weather. La Spezia leads by 10 points.10
CologneLa Spezia
Score6070
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C11.4 °C to 30.3 °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
La Spezia
11
13
16
18
23
27
30
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
La Spezia
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
La Spezia
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
La Spezia
9
10
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
La Spezia
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). La Spezia: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (64.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneLa Spezia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 65 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
BLQ · 125 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 125 km
TiranaTIA
2 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
GOA · 86 km
PalermoPMO
2 h 25 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
€207-240
1 stop
GOA · 86 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
1 h 50 m
€119-200
1 stop
PSA · 65 km
CataniaCTA
2 h 40 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 35 m
€55-66
PSA · 65 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
PSA · 65 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

MeasureCologneLa Spezia
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 m3 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsPisa International Airport (PSA)65 km from centre81 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneLa Spezia
City population1,024,62192,119
People per km²2,5301,792
Museums within 10 km4012
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre8422
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months

Where else could you go?

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