VacationSelector

Florence or Zagreb?

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

Your match

Florence
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Zagreb
47
match

Wins on value for money 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.

The verdict

Choose Florence if the trip is built around museums and heritage, with 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach and most of what you want to see within walking distance of the centre.

Choose Zagreb if you want later nights and a wider range of kitchens, and if high summer heat is the thing to avoid: highs peak near 29°C where Florence reaches 33°C.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

FlorenceZagreb
Beaches & swimming. Florence and Zagreb are level on 0.
FlorenceZagreb
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km08
Coast distance78 km117 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Florence leads by 7 points.7
FlorenceZagreb
Score5952
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,299374
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1527
Museums & heritage. Florence leads by 37 points.37
FlorenceZagreb
Score8245
Museums within 10 km13241
Museums within 2 km of centre9340
Share of museums within 2 km %7098
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Zagreb leads by 5 points.5
FlorenceZagreb
Score5661
Drinking venues within 4 km8181,009
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre599571
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7357
Nightclubs within 4 km3463
Nature & day trips. Florence leads by 4 points.4
FlorenceZagreb
Score3834
Protected land share 50 km %99
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km86 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Florence leads by 24 points.24
FlorenceZagreb
Score5228
Tourist attractions within 2 km307
Park area within 2 km86 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Florence leads by 15 points.15
FlorenceZagreb
Score7560
Notable places within 2 km292122
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zagreb leads by 12 points.12
FlorenceZagreb
Score6880
Price level global64.948.5
Daily budget€155€138
Year-round weather. Florence leads by 6 points.6
FlorenceZagreb
Score6862
Monthly daytime high10.8 °C to 32.7 °C5.4 °C to 28.5 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 132 mm47 mm to 104 mm
Dry months20
0255075100

Where they differ

Florence has about three times as many museums as Zagreb and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, where Zagreb has none. It packs about twice as many notable places into walking distance of the centre, along with many more attractions near the centre and about twice as much park space, which matters with children in tow.

Zagreb has about twice as many nightclubs and somewhat more places to drink, but only about half of them sit near the centre, so a night out means moving between areas. Its kitchens cover a wider range of cuisines.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination. Zagreb has 8 beaches nearby and Florence has none, but neither gets a month of sea at 21°C or more, so water is not a reason to pick either.

The other close axes are countryside and day trips, where 9% of the land around each is protected, and eating and drinking, where both put a workable choice inside a compact centre. Both also share the same annual shape: cold Januarys and their heaviest rain in autumn.

Which traveller are you?

The traveller who plans days around museums and historic buildings should take Florence: about three times as many museums as Zagreb, 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and enough packed into the centre that a short break needs no transport.

Anyone whose trip revolves around the evening will do better in Zagreb, with about twice as many nightclubs, more places to drink and a wider spread of kitchens. The trade-off is that roughly half of it sits away from the centre.

Families lean to Florence, with many more attractions near the centre and about twice as much park space. Neither city has a theme park within reach, so days are built from streets, parks and indoor sights.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €155 and €138, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels in Italy and Croatia, not measurements of Florence or Zagreb. A capital and a heavily visited art city can each sit well off their own national average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so use them as country context and price the actual trip.

Zagreb's 8 beaches nearby say less than the count suggests: neither city has a month of sea at 21°C or more. And Florence's driest months are also its hottest, so dry does not mean comfortable.

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
Zagreb
5
8
13
18
23
27
29
28
22
17
11
6
Rainfall, mm
Florence
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Zagreb
47
48
49
63
76
90
87
85
104
91
88
63
Daylight, hours per day
Florence
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zagreb
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Florence
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3
Zagreb
2
4
5
6
8
9
9
9
6
4
2
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). Zagreb: 1991-2020 normals, Zagreb / Gric (0.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Florence is at its best in late spring and early autumn: May at 24°C, June at 29°C with only 41mm of rain. July and August are hot, at 32-33°C, but dry. October and November are the months to avoid, at 125-132mm.

Zagreb works best from June to August, warm without Florence's peak heat, though summer rain runs 85-90mm. May, at 23°C and 76mm, is the drier alternative. Winter separates them clearly: January highs of 5°C against Florence's 11°C.

Getting there

Flying fromFlorenceZagreb
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€143-159
FLR · 6 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€180-199
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 55 m
€232-255
2 stops
FLR · 6 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
MunichMUC
1 h 15 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 85 km
2 h 0 m
€153-254
ZAG · 11 km
RomeFCO, CIA
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 10 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 25 m
€185-255
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 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

MeasureFlorenceZagreb
Official languageItalianCroatian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation50 m127 m
Main airportFlorence Airport, Peretola (FLR)6 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsZagreb Franjo Tuđman International Airport (ZAG)11 km from centre60 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureFlorenceZagreb
City population360,930767,131
People per km²3,528–
Museums within 10 km14027
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre6242

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Florence or Zagreb 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.