VacationSelector

Genoa or Marseille?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Genoa
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Marseille
57
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 swimming shapes the trip. The sea is at the centre and stays warm well into September, and the compact centre holds more museums and more notable places within walking distance.

Choose Marseille if eating out matters more. It has about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, plus drier summers and theme parks within reach for children.

Scoreboard

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

GenoaMarseille
Beaches & swimming. Genoa leads by 6 points.6
GenoaMarseille
Score7367
Swim season months42
Beaches 10 km3764
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Marseille leads by 25 points.25
GenoaMarseille
Score5075
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6911,320
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1439
Museums & heritage. Genoa leads by 5 points.5
GenoaMarseille
Score5550
Museums within 10 km4733
Museums within 2 km of centre3323
Share of museums within 2 km %7070
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Genoa leads by 2 points.2
GenoaMarseille
Score5048
Drinking venues within 4 km637544
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre419454
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6683
Nightclubs within 4 km1730
Nature & day trips. Marseille leads by 2 points.2
GenoaMarseille
Score3537
Protected land share 50 km %815
Landscape blanket share 50 km %013
Land share of disc %6156
Park area within 2 km29 hectares25 hectares
Good for families. Marseille leads by 6 points.6
GenoaMarseille
Score3844
Tourist attractions within 2 km2117
Park area within 2 km29 hectares25 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km04
Sights concentration. Genoa leads by 3 points.3
GenoaMarseille
Score6158
Notable places within 2 km130111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Genoa leads by 6 points.6
GenoaMarseille
Score6862
Price level global64.973.7
Daily budget€155€160
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 2 points.2
GenoaMarseille
Score7375
Monthly daytime high11.7 °C to 27.9 °C11.8 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall12 mm to 122 mm11 mm to 82 mm
Dry months36
0255075100

Where they differ

Genoa's edge is the swimming season rather than the count of beaches: the sea holds 21°C or more for four months against Marseille's two. It also has somewhat more museums and more notable places within walking distance of the centre.

Marseille has twice as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, and its coast is broader, with 64 beaches nearby against Genoa's 37. For families, it has 4 theme parks within reach where Genoa has none, though Genoa keeps more attractions near the centre.

Where they are alike

Nightlife is where they sit closest. In both, the drinking and clubbing is concentrated near the centre, so an evening out is walkable; Genoa has somewhat more bars, Marseille roughly twice as many clubs.

Both start the year from a January high of 12°C, both keep their sights tight around the centre, and each has one UNESCO-listed place within day-trip reach. Neither is strong for day trips, though protected land is more extensive around Marseille, 15% against 8%.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling to eat should take Marseille. It has about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, so a week of varied dinners is easier to fill.

Swimmers should take Genoa. The sea is 0km from both centres, but Genoa holds 21°C or more for four months, so a swim is realistic well outside the peak weeks.

Families with young children lean towards Marseille for its 4 theme parks within reach, though Genoa answers with more tourist attractions and park space near the centre, all reachable on foot.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €155 and €160, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels for Italy and France, not measurements of either city. A large port city can sit well off its own country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so neither tells you which trip costs more.

The beach counts describe supply, not crowding: the best months here are also when most people travel, and a shoreline at the edge of the centre concentrates them. Autumn stays attractive while the rain returns, around 72-82mm in September in both, and wetter still after that in Genoa.

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
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Genoa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Genoa
58
41
47
67
40
26
12
20
72
101
122
89
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Daylight, hours per day
Genoa
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Genoa
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
10
7
6
4
4
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Genoa: 1991-2020 normals, Genova / Sestri (6.7 km from centre). Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Genoa is the better pick in high summer. July and August bring highs of 27-28°C with the sea at 24-25°C and very little rain, and September still swims at 23°C as the rain returns.

Marseille suits late spring, when May and June reach 24-28°C on 28-38mm of rain and midsummer heat is still ahead. High summer turns hot, near 31°C, and through late autumn Marseille stays the drier of the two.

Getting there

Flying fromGenoaMarseille
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
no fares
GOA · 7 km
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
MadridMAD
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 137 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 137 km
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
no fares
GOA · 7 km
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 35 m
€78-142
MXP · 137 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 15 m
€67-76
LIN · 119 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
AthensATH
2 h 25 m
€91-99
MXP · 137 km
2 h 40 m
€160-212
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 10 m
€141-188
1 stop
MXP · 137 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 50 m
no fares
MXP · 137 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 5 m
no fares
MXP · 137 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 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

MeasureGenoaMarseille
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 m0 m
Main airportGenoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA)7 km from centre23 non-stop destinationsMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenoaMarseille
City population558,745886,040
People per km²2,3253,683
Museums within 10 km5127
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4193
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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