VacationSelector

Cologne or Milan?

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

Your match

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and places to eat with your weighting.

Milan
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

CologneMilan
Beaches & swimming. Cologne and Milan are level on 0.
CologneMilan
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km404
Coast distance256 km120 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 2 points.2
CologneMilan
Score7270
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,991
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3520
Museums & heritage. Milan leads by 14 points.14
CologneMilan
Score6074
Museums within 10 km4787
Museums within 2 km of centre2755
Share of museums within 2 km %5763
Unesco sites within 50 km34
Nightlife. Milan leads by 11 points.11
CologneMilan
Score6475
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1072,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727961
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6643
Nightclubs within 4 km9070
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
CologneMilan
Score7165
Protected land share 50 km %5330
Landscape blanket share 50 km %5211
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares102 hectares
Good for families. Milan leads by 5 points.5
CologneMilan
Score7277
Tourist attractions within 2 km4376
Park area within 2 km118 hectares102 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km65
Sights concentration. Milan leads by 21 points.21
CologneMilan
Score5374
Notable places within 2 km81266
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Milan leads by 8 points.8
CologneMilan
Score6068
Price level global75.964.9
Daily budget€163€155
Year-round weather. Milan leads by 4 points.4
CologneMilan
Score6064
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C7 °C to 28.6 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Milan
7
10
15
17
23
26
29
28
24
18
11
7
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Milan
54
44
50
78
102
75
57
83
116
113
127
49
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
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
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
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. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Milan: 1991-2020 normals, Novara / Cameri (41.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneMilan
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 40 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
1 h 30 m
€34-53
MXP · 40 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
€96
MXP · 40 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
€116-135
LIN · 7 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
€65-131
MXP · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 20 m
€46-63
MXP · 40 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
4 h 15 m
no fares
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 2026-09 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

MeasureCologneMilan
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 m138 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)40 km from centre203 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneMilan
City population1,024,6211,354,196
People per km²2,5307,453
Museums within 10 km4087
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km34
Distinct cuisines in the centre8479

Where else could you go?

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