VacationSelector

Florence or Zurich?

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 value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on places to eat 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 museums and heritage are the point of the trip, if you want a centre you can cover on foot, and if you want warmth: August highs reach 33°C.

Choose Zurich if you'd rather have the wider choice of kitchens, lake beaches within reach, more protected land around the city, and summers that top out near 24°C.

Scoreboard

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

FlorenceZurich
Beaches & swimming. Florence and Zurich are level on 0.
FlorenceZurich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km023
Coast distance78 km632 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 8 points.8
FlorenceZurich
Score5967
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,299974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1530
Museums & heritage. Florence leads by 26 points.26
FlorenceZurich
Score8256
Museums within 10 km13276
Museums within 2 km of centre9337
Share of museums within 2 km %7049
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Florence leads by 2 points.2
FlorenceZurich
Score5654
Drinking venues within 4 km818676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre599553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7382
Nightclubs within 4 km3474
Nature & day trips. Florence leads by 1 points.1
FlorenceZurich
Score3837
Protected land share 50 km %916
Landscape blanket share 50 km %29
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km86 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Florence leads by 16 points.16
FlorenceZurich
Score5236
Tourist attractions within 2 km308
Park area within 2 km86 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Florence leads by 16 points.16
FlorenceZurich
Score7559
Notable places within 2 km292119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Florence leads by 33 points.33
FlorenceZurich
Score6835
Price level global64.9110.5
Daily budget€155€248
Year-round weather. Florence leads by 15 points.15
FlorenceZurich
Score6853
Monthly daytime high10.8 °C to 32.7 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 132 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months20
0255075100

Where they differ

Florence has about twice as many museums as Zurich, clustered tightly around the centre, with 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Zurich's 1. It also has about twice as many notable places within walking distance, plus more tourist attractions and more park space near the centre. Italy's national daily estimate is €155 against Switzerland's €248.

Zurich covers a much wider range of kitchens, has 23 beaches nearby where Florence has none, and 2 theme parks within reach.

Where they are alike

Neither city is a swimming destination. Zurich has lake beaches, Florence none, but neither has a month with water at 21°C or more, so a swim is incidental.

Day trips are similarly limited from both, each with a modest share of protected land nearby. Nightlife is close as well: Florence has somewhat more places to drink, Zurich about twice as many nightclubs, and in both they sit near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller coming for art and history should pick Florence: about twice as many museums as Zurich, 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against one, and most of it walkable from the centre.

Families are split. Florence puts more attractions and park space within walking distance of the centre, which suits short days with children; Zurich has 2 theme parks within reach and beaches on the lake.

Someone travelling to eat and go out will find Zurich's range of kitchens wider and its club scene deeper, while Florence offers more places to drink near the centre and a shorter walk back.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures are national estimates of restaurant and hotel prices, €155 for Italy and €248 for Switzerland, not measurements of Florence or Zurich. A heavily visited city can sit a long way from its own country's average, so treat the gap as a rough indication of price level, not a per-day forecast for either trip.

Florence's strongest months are also its hottest and its driest: August at 33°C. Its milder autumn brings the heaviest rain. In Zurich the warmest months are the wettest, so a warm month is not a dry one.

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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Florence
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Florence
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Florence
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

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). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Florence peaks from May to June, with highs of 24-29°C and 41-63mm of rain. July and August are its driest months, 32-35mm, but hot at 32-33°C. September still reaches 27°C while rain climbs to 102mm, and October and November bring 125-132mm.

Zurich is best in July and August at 24°C, though May to August are its wettest months at 119-128mm; the warm window is also the wet one. Winter days sit near 4°C.

Getting there

Flying fromFlorenceZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€180-199
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€143-159
FLR · 6 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 55 m
€232-255
2 stops
FLR · 6 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€113-168
FLR · 6 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 70 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
BSL · 81 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
1 h 30 m
€70-92
ZRH · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
1 h 50 m
€119-200
1 stop
PSA · 70 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 85 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 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

MeasureFlorenceZurich
Official languageItalianFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation50 m408 m
Main airportFlorence Airport, Peretola (FLR)6 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureFlorenceZurich
City population360,930452,421
People per km²3,5285,147
Museums within 10 km14063
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre6278

Where else could you go?

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