VacationSelector

Geneva or Pisa?

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

Your match

Geneva
✓ Best match
50
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Pisa
45
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming 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 Geneva if the trip is built around eating out and evenings out, with far more restaurants and bars close to the centre, and around green space, with 27% of the surrounding land protected.

Choose Pisa if you want warmth and sun, with summer highs of 30°C, a sea that stays swimmable for four months, and a heritage centre you can cover on foot.

Scoreboard

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

GenevaPisa
Beaches & swimming. Pisa leads by 21 points.21
GenevaPisa
Score021
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km431
Coast distance279 km10 km
Water distance—10 km
Places to eat. Geneva leads by 36 points.36
GenevaPisa
Score7034
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,028379
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km359
Museums & heritage. Pisa leads by 3 points.3
GenevaPisa
Score5255
Museums within 10 km3527
Museums within 2 km of centre2022
Share of museums within 2 km %5781
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Geneva leads by 22 points.22
GenevaPisa
Score5028
Drinking venues within 4 km549232
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre427203
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7888
Nightclubs within 4 km603
Nature & day trips. Geneva leads by 20 points.20
GenevaPisa
Score5939
Protected land share 50 km %279
Landscape blanket share 50 km %210
Land share of disc %10065
Park area within 2 km182 hectares40 hectares
Good for families. Geneva leads by 18 points.18
GenevaPisa
Score6547
Tourist attractions within 2 km2820
Park area within 2 km182 hectares40 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Geneva leads by 9 points.9
GenevaPisa
Score5647
Notable places within 2 km9958
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Pisa leads by 33 points.33
GenevaPisa
Score3568
Price level global110.564.9
Daily budget€248€155
Year-round weather. Pisa leads by 11 points.11
GenevaPisa
Score5970
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C11.4 °C to 30.3 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 mm32 mm to 132 mm
Dry months02
0255075100

Where they differ

Geneva has about three times as many restaurants near the centre as Pisa, and a much wider range of kitchens with them. It also has roughly twice as many places to drink and many times as many nightclubs, nearly all of them close to the centre.

Pisa runs warmer through the year, with daytime highs of 11-30°C against Geneva's 5-27°C, and it has two months at 40mm of rain or less where Geneva has none. National daily budget estimates are €155 for Italy and €248 for Switzerland.

Where they are alike

Museums and heritage is common ground. Geneva has somewhat more museums, Pisa keeps its own more tightly packed around the centre, and both put UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, 3 from Pisa and 2 from Geneva.

Both also keep their notable sights clustered in a walkable centre rather than spread out. Summer peaks are comparable, 27°C in Geneva and 30°C in Pisa, and January is the coolest month in each.

Which traveller are you?

Someone whose trip is organised around meals and late evenings should take Geneva. It has far more restaurants near the centre, a wider spread of kitchens, and more bars and clubs, nearly all of them walkable.

Families and walkers are also better served in Geneva: 27% of the land around it is protected against 9% around Pisa, and there is much more park space near the centre. Both have 2 theme parks within reach.

Anyone travelling to swim and sit in the sun should pick Pisa, where the sea reaches 25°C in August and stays warm enough for four months, with museums packed tightly into a small centre.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures are national estimates for Switzerland and Italy, price levels for restaurants and hotels rather than measurements of either city. A heavily visited city can sit far from its country's average in either direction, so the gap between the two national figures does not tell you what a trip will cost.

Geneva's 43 nearby beaches are freshwater and come with no sea season, so swimming there is a short summer affair; Pisa's single beach comes with months of warm sea. And Pisa's September still ranks well despite 102mm of rain, so a good month there 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
Geneva
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Pisa
11
13
16
18
23
27
30
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Geneva
No coastline within reach
Pisa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Pisa
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Daylight, hours per day
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Pisa
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2
Pisa
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre). Pisa: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Geneva is at its best from June to August, when highs reach 24-27°C. Rain is spread through the year rather than concentrated, so summer is not a dry season, and by late autumn the daytime warmth has gone.

Pisa's summer is both hotter and drier: July and August are its driest months at 32-35mm, with highs of 30°C, and the months either side stay warm. The trade-off is autumn, when October and November bring 125-132mm, the wettest stretch either city records.

Getting there

Flying fromGenevaPisa
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 5 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
TiranaTIA
2 h 5 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 30 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 65 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 5 km
1 h 55 m
€210-262
1 stop
PSA · 4 km
PortoOPO
2 h 10 m
€127-171
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 55 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 50 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 5 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
PSA · 4 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

MeasureGenevaPisa
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshItalian
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation403 m4 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsPisa International Airport (PSA)4 km from centre81 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenevaPisa
City population209,06188,737
People per km²13,148479
Museums within 10 km3527
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre8029
Swim season, months above 21 °C–4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Geneva or Pisa 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. 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.