VacationSelector

Florence or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Florence
55
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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.

FlorenceIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
FlorenceIstanbul
Score043
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km02
Coast distance78 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
FlorenceIstanbul
Score5970
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,2992,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1520
Museums & heritage. Florence leads by 16 points.16
FlorenceIstanbul
Score8266
Museums within 10 km132145
Museums within 2 km of centre9371
Share of museums within 2 km %7049
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 23 points.23
FlorenceIstanbul
Score5679
Drinking venues within 4 km8182,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre5991,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7352
Nightclubs within 4 km34221
Nature & day trips. Florence leads by 13 points.13
FlorenceIstanbul
Score3825
Protected land share 50 km %91
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %10048
Park area within 2 km86 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 15 points.15
FlorenceIstanbul
Score5267
Tourist attractions within 2 km3068
Park area within 2 km86 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Florence and Istanbul are level on 75.
FlorenceIstanbul
Score7575
Notable places within 2 km292285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 21 points.21
FlorenceIstanbul
Score6889
Price level global64.935.2
Daily budget€155€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 1 points.1
FlorenceIstanbul
Score6869
Monthly daytime high10.8 °C to 32.7 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 132 mm23 mm to 101 mm
Dry months24
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
Florence
11
12
16
20
24
29
32
33
27
22
16
11
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Florence
No coastline within reach
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Florence
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Florence
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Florence
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Florence: 1995-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Firenze / Peretola (5.6 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromFlorenceIstanbul
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€143-159
FLR · 6 km
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€180-199
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 55 m
€232-255
2 stops
FLR · 6 km
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 70 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€113-168
FLR · 6 km
3 h 15 m
€179-269
IST · 36 km
RomeFCO, CIA
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
MunichMUC
1 h 15 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 10 m
no fares
PSA · 70 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
IST · 36 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

MeasureFlorenceIstanbul
Official languageItalianTurkish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation50 m100 m
Main airportFlorence Airport, Peretola (FLR)6 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureFlorenceIstanbul
City population360,93015,655,924
People per km²3,5282,930
Museums within 10 km14072
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre6262
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Florence or Istanbul 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.