VacationSelector

Genoa or Lyon?

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

Your match

Genoa
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Lyon
52
match

Wins on places to eat and good for families 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 Genoa if the sea matters: beaches within reach, months warm enough to swim, milder winters and a centre where the notable buildings sit close together.

Choose Lyon if you are going for the table and the evenings: about twice as many restaurants near the centre, more clubs, and more for children, with parks and 2 theme parks within reach.

Scoreboard

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

GenoaLyon
Beaches & swimming. Genoa leads by 73 points.73
GenoaLyon
Score730
Swim season months40
Beaches 10 km3726
Coast distance0 km253 km
Water distance0 km—
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 29 points.29
GenoaLyon
Score5079
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6911,691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1440
Museums & heritage. Genoa and Lyon are level on 55.
GenoaLyon
Score5555
Museums within 10 km4753
Museums within 2 km of centre3325
Share of museums within 2 km %7047
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 8 points.8
GenoaLyon
Score5058
Drinking venues within 4 km637866
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre419611
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6671
Nightclubs within 4 km1747
Nature & day trips. Genoa leads by 2 points.2
GenoaLyon
Score3533
Protected land share 50 km %86
Landscape blanket share 50 km %06
Land share of disc %61100
Park area within 2 km29 hectares120 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 21 points.21
GenoaLyon
Score3859
Tourist attractions within 2 km2125
Park area within 2 km29 hectares120 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Genoa leads by 7 points.7
GenoaLyon
Score6154
Notable places within 2 km13086
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Genoa leads by 6 points.6
GenoaLyon
Score6862
Price level global64.973.7
Daily budget€155€160
Year-round weather. Genoa leads by 9 points.9
GenoaLyon
Score7364
Monthly daytime high11.7 °C to 27.9 °C7 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall12 mm to 122 mm43 mm to 101 mm
Dry months30
0255075100

Where they differ

Genoa is the one with a coast you can actually use: 37 beaches nearby against Lyon's 26, and 4 months when the sea holds 21°C or more, which Lyon has none of.

Lyon is the stronger choice at the table, with roughly twice as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens. It also works better with children: far more park space close in, more attractions within easy reach, and 2 theme parks where Genoa has none.

Where they are alike

Museums and heritage come out level. The two hold a similar number of museums, and each has UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, 2 from Lyon and 1 from Genoa. The difference is layout rather than depth: Genoa's museums sit more tightly around its centre.

Day trips are limited from both, with 8% of the land around Genoa protected and slightly less around Lyon. The national price estimates behind them are close too, €155 and €160.

Which traveller are you?

If you want to swim, Genoa is the only one of the two that answers: 37 beaches nearby and a sea reaching 25°C in August, with mild winters if you return off-season.

If you travel to eat and stay out late, Lyon has about twice as many restaurants near the centre, a wider spread of kitchens and roughly three times as many nightclubs, most of them close in.

Families are better served in Lyon: much more park space near the centre, more attractions within easy reach and 2 theme parks, none of which Genoa matches. Genoa's compact centre still suits short walking breaks.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €155 and €160, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of Genoa or Lyon. A single city can sit well away from its country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so neither can be called the cheaper trip on this evidence.

Genoa's coastal advantage is concentrated in the weeks everyone else uses: the sea only passes 21°C in high summer, and the driest months are the busiest. Quieter months bring a cool sea and over 100mm of rain, so the beach picture is a summer picture.

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
Genoa
12
12
15
18
21
25
27
28
25
20
16
13
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Genoa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Lyon
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Genoa
58
41
47
67
40
26
12
20
72
101
122
89
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Daylight, hours per day
Genoa
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Genoa
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
10
7
6
4
4
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Genoa: 1991-2020 normals, Genova / Sestri (6.7 km from centre). Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Genoa is at its best from June to August, with highs of 25-28°C, a sea of 22-25°C and only 12-26mm of rain a month. September still swims, but the rain returns and October brings 101mm.

Lyon is warm over the same weeks, 26-28°C, though summer rain stays at 66-73mm a month, so a wet afternoon is likelier. Late spring and September, closer to 21-23°C, are the more comfortable months for walking the city.

Getting there

Flying fromGenoaLyon
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 137 km
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
MadridMAD
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 137 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 35 m
€78-142
MXP · 137 km
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 137 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
no fares
GOA · 7 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 15 m
€67-76
LIN · 119 km
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 137 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
no fares
GOA · 7 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
AthensATH
2 h 25 m
€91-99
MXP · 137 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 10 m
€710-815
1 stop
MXP · 137 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 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

MeasureGenoaLyon
Official languageItalianFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation20 m160 m
Main airportGenoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA)7 km from centre23 non-stop destinationsLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenoaLyon
City population558,745519,127
People per km²2,32510,838
Museums within 10 km5142
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre41148
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Genoa or Lyon 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.