Florence or Ljubljana?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration with your weighting.
Wins on value for money and nature & day trips 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 Florence if the trip is built around museums and a dense centre where the notable places are within walking distance of one another, and if you want warmth, with August highs of 33°C.
Choose Ljubljana if you want a smaller city with more countryside in reach, 13% of the land around it protected, beaches nearby, and a wider spread of kitchens to eat from.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Florence and Ljubljana are level on 0.
| Florence | Ljubljana | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 0 | 10 |
| Coast distance | 78 km | 72 km |
| Water distance | — | — |
Places to eat. Florence leads by 4 points.4
| Florence | Ljubljana | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 59 | 55 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 1,299 | 292 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 15 | 40 |
Museums & heritage. Florence leads by 27 points.27
| Florence | Ljubljana | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 82 | 55 |
| Museums within 10 km | 132 | 26 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 93 | 23 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 70 | 88 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 4 | 3 |
Nightlife. Florence leads by 11 points.11
| Florence | Ljubljana | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 56 | 45 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 818 | 458 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 599 | 284 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 73 | 62 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 34 | 24 |
Nature & day trips. Ljubljana leads by 2 points.2
| Florence | Ljubljana | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 38 | 40 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 9 | 13 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 2 | 5 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 86 hectares | 75 hectares |
Good for families. Florence leads by 14 points.14
| Florence | Ljubljana | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 52 | 38 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 30 | 12 |
| Park area within 2 km | 86 hectares | 75 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Florence leads by 17 points.17
| Florence | Ljubljana | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 75 | 58 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 292 | 109 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Ljubljana leads by 4 points.4
| Florence | Ljubljana | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 72 |
| Price level global | 64.9 | 59.6 |
| Daily budget | €155 | €131 |
Year-round weather. Florence leads by 12 points.12
| Florence | Ljubljana | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 56 |
| Monthly daytime high | 10.8 °C to 32.7 °C | 4.1 °C to 27.9 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 32 mm to 132 mm | 67 mm to 159 mm |
| Dry months | 2 | 0 |
Where they differ
Florence has many times as many museums as Ljubljana, about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and about three times as many attractions suited to families. It also has about twice as many places to drink, and it runs warmer all year, 11-33°C against 4-28°C, with two months at 40mm of rain or less.
Ljubljana counters with 10 beaches within reach where Florence has none, more protected land around it, 13% against 9%, and a wider range of kitchens.
Where they are alike
Neither is a place to swim in the sea: Ljubljana has 10 beaches nearby and Florence none, but neither gets a month of sea at 21°C or more, so water is incidental to either trip rather than a reason to go.
Both sit at a similar level for eating out, for green space near the centre, and for day trips into protected countryside. The national budget estimates behind them are also close, €155 for Italy and €131 for Slovenia.
Which traveller are you?
If you are travelling for art and history, Florence is the clear pick: many times as many museums, 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 3, and a centre compact enough to cross on foot.
Families lean Florence too, with about three times as many attractions near the centre and comparable park space; neither city has a theme park within reach, so plan around sights rather than rides.
Walkers and day-trippers do better in Ljubljana, where 13% of the surrounding land is protected, beaches sit within reach, and the range of kitchens in a small centre is wider.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, €155 for Italy and €131 for Slovenia, not measurements of Florence or Ljubljana. A capital and a heavily visited city can each sit far from their own country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so neither number tells you what a trip there will cost.
Florence's driest months, July and August, are also its hottest at 32-33°C, so little rain there means heat rather than comfort. Its attractions are also packed into the same walkable centre, which makes sightseeing easy and crowds hard to escape in the strongest 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. Florence: 1995-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Firenze / Peretola (5.6 km from centre). Ljubljana: 1991-2020 normals, Ljubljana / Bezigrad (1.9 km from centre).
Florence is at its best in May and June, 24-29°C with 41-63mm of rain. July and August are the driest months at 32-35mm, but they reach 32-33°C, and the rain returns hard in autumn, 125mm in October.
Ljubljana's window is June to August, 26-28°C, though rain runs 121-126mm a month through it and 159mm in September. Winter is the clearer split: highs of 4°C against Florence's 11°C, so the cold season favours Florence.
Getting there
| Flying from | Florence | Ljubljana |
|---|---|---|
| RomeFCO, CIA | 55 m €136-139 1 stop FLR · 6 km | 1 h 10 m no fares TRS · 84 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 40 m €143-159 FLR · 6 km | 1 h 45 m €139-178 1 stop LJU · 20 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 5 m €180-199 1 stop FLR · 6 km | 2 h 5 m no fares LJU · 20 km |
| TiranaTIA | 1 h 35 m no fares PSA · 70 km | 1 h 30 m no fares TRS · 84 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 30 m no fares FLR · 6 km | 1 h 25 m no fares LJU · 20 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 55 m €232-255 2 stops FLR · 6 km | 1 h 50 m no fares LJU · 20 km |
| ZurichZRH | 1 h 10 m no fares FLR · 6 km | 1 h 15 m no fares LJU · 20 km |
| MunichMUC | 1 h 15 m no fares FLR · 6 km | 1 h 0 m no fares LJU · 20 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 25 m €154-191 1 stop BLQ · 85 km | 2 h 10 m €188-190 LJU · 20 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 5 h 55 m no fares BLQ · 85 km | 5 h 45 m €374-528 2 stops LJU · 20 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
| Measure | Florence | Ljubljana |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Italian | Slovene |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CFL230 V, 50 Hz | CF230 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 | 50 m | 309 m |
| Main airport | Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR)6 km from centre36 non-stop destinations | Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport (LJU)20 km from centre28 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 21 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Florence | Ljubljana |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 360,930 | 284,293 |
| People per km² | 3,528 | 1,736 |
| Museums within 10 km | 140 | 14 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 4 | 3 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 62 | 63 |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Florence or Ljubljana somewhere new.