Interlaken or Siena?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.
Wins on museums & heritage and value for money 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 Interlaken if the point of the trip is the land around it: 19% of it protected, beaches nearby, and a summer that stays around 24°C rather than turning hot.
Choose Siena if you want museums and a dense walkable centre, with more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach and more to eat and drink close by.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Interlaken and Siena are level on 0.
| Interlaken | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 12 | 0 |
| Coast distance | 713 km | 64 km |
| Water distance | — | — |
Places to eat. Siena leads by 3 points.3
| Interlaken | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 29 | 32 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 118 | 242 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 17 | 11 |
Museums & heritage. Siena leads by 48 points.48
| Interlaken | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 23 | 71 |
| Museums within 10 km | 5 | 55 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 2 | 51 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 40 | 93 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 2 | 5 |
Nightlife. Siena leads by 13 points.13
| Interlaken | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 4 | 17 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 42 | 142 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 38 | 119 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 90 | 84 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 3 | 1 |
Nature & day trips. Interlaken leads by 8 points.8
| Interlaken | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 27 | 19 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 19 | 3 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 5 hectares | 29 hectares |
Good for families. Siena leads by 17 points.17
| Interlaken | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 14 | 31 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 11 | 13 |
| Park area within 2 km | 5 hectares | 29 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Siena leads by 28 points.28
| Interlaken | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 22 | 50 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 14 | 69 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Siena leads by 33 points.33
| Interlaken | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 35 | 68 |
| Price level global | 110.5 | 64.9 |
| Daily budget | €248 | €155 |
Year-round weather. Siena leads by 7 points.7
| Interlaken | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 57 | 64 |
| Monthly daytime high | 2.8 °C to 23.6 °C | 8.9 °C to 31.3 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 34 mm to 68 mm | 49 mm to 136 mm |
| Dry months | 3 | 0 |
Where they differ
Interlaken sits in more protected countryside, 19% of the land around it against 3% around Siena, and it has 12 beaches nearby where Siena has none. Its kitchens cover a much wider range, and it has more nightclubs.
Siena has many times as many museums, 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Interlaken's 2, and many more notable places within walking distance of the centre. Restaurants near the centre are about twice as many. The national daily budget estimate is €155 for Siena's country against €248 for Interlaken's.
Where they are alike
Swimming is not the reason to go to either. Neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so neither offers a swimming season.
Eating out lands in a similar place overall: Siena has more restaurants near its centre, Interlaken a wider spread of kitchens. Day trips are modest from both, with park space near the centre in Siena and open protected country around Interlaken. Both also swing widely between cold winters and warm summers.
Which traveller are you?
Anyone travelling for museums and old streets should take Siena: many times as many museums, 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Interlaken's 2, and most of the notable places within walking distance of the centre.
Walkers and anyone who wants open country should take Interlaken: 19% of the land around it is protected, against 3% around Siena, and it has 12 beaches nearby for warm-weather days.
Families lean to Siena, with somewhat more attractions and much more park space near the centre, and milder shoulder months for getting about on foot; neither city has a theme park within reach.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €248 and €155, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of Interlaken or Siena. A small town and a heavily visited historic city can each sit far from their own country average, by more than the gap between the two national figures.
No weather station near either city records sunshine, so that side of the comparison is simply unmeasured; the monthly picture here rests on temperature and rainfall alone. And Interlaken's 12 beaches come with no month of water at 21°C or more, so they are a summer extra rather than a swimming season.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Interlaken: 2005-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Meiringen / Unterbach (19.3 km from centre). Siena: 2006-2017 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Arezzo (45 km from centre).
Interlaken is at its best from June to August, with highs of 22-24°C, though July and August are also its wettest summer months at 61-62mm. September holds 18°C with only 38mm, the driest stretch of the warm season.
Siena peaks in June, 28°C with 71mm, and again in September, 26°C but 103mm of rain. May at 23°C is drier. July and August are the driest months at 49-53mm, but highs reach 31°C. Autumn and winter stay consistently wet.
Getting there
| Flying from | Interlaken | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 35 m €110-163 ZRH · 100 km | 2 h 5 m €180-199 1 stop FLR · 55 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 15 m €163-196 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 40 m €143-159 FLR · 55 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 25 m €234-276 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 55 m €232-255 2 stops FLR · 55 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 1 h 40 m €114-151 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 35 m €113-168 FLR · 55 km |
| TiranaTIA | 2 h 5 m no fares BSL · 105 km | 1 h 35 m no fares PSA · 86 km |
| MadridMAD | 2 h 5 m €158-220 1 stop ZRH · 100 km | 2 h 10 m no fares FLR · 55 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 30 m €70-92 ZRH · 100 km | 55 m €136-139 1 stop FLR · 55 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 0 m no fares ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 30 m no fares FLR · 55 km |
| BerlinBER | 1 h 25 m €140-176 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 50 m €119-200 1 stop PSA · 86 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 6 h 15 m €232-366 1 stop ZRH · 100 km | 5 h 55 m no fares BLQ · 135 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
| Measure | Interlaken | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | French, German, Italian, Romansh | Italian |
| Currency | Swiss Franc (CHF) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CJ230 V, 50 Hz | CFL230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 571 m | 322 m |
| Main airport | Zürich Airport (ZRH)100 km from centre181 non-stop destinations | Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR)55 km from centre36 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 10 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Interlaken | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 6,123 | 52,812 |
| People per km² | 1,424 | 446 |
| Museums within 10 km | 3 | 29 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 2 | 5 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 22 | 25 |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Interlaken or Siena somewhere new.