Interlaken or Venice?
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 beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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 you want mountains and protected country on the doorstep, and are content with a small town where evenings are quiet and the sights few.
Choose Venice if you want museums and monuments within walking distance of each other, beaches with sea at 26°C in August, and more to keep children occupied without leaving town.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Venice leads by 69 points.69
| Interlaken | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 69 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 12 | 20 |
| Coast distance | 713 km | 4 km |
| Water distance | — | 4 km |
Places to eat. Venice leads by 16 points.16
| Interlaken | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 29 | 45 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 118 | 750 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 17 | 10 |
Museums & heritage. Venice leads by 49 points.49
| Interlaken | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 23 | 72 |
| Museums within 10 km | 5 | 57 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 2 | 45 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 40 | 79 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 2 | 5 |
Nightlife. Venice leads by 31 points.31
| Interlaken | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 4 | 35 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 42 | 342 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 38 | 306 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 90 | 89 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 3 | 3 |
Nature & day trips. Interlaken leads by 10 points.10
| Interlaken | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 27 | 17 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 19 | 4 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 70 |
| Park area within 2 km | 5 hectares | 15 hectares |
Good for families. Venice leads by 43 points.43
| Interlaken | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 14 | 57 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 11 | 72 |
| Park area within 2 km | 5 hectares | 15 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 3 |
Sights concentration. Venice leads by 61 points.61
| Interlaken | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 22 | 83 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 14 | 464 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Venice leads by 33 points.33
| Interlaken | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 35 | 68 |
| Price level global | 110.5 | 64.9 |
| Daily budget | €248 | €155 |
Year-round weather. Venice leads by 9 points.9
| Interlaken | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 57 | 66 |
| Monthly daytime high | 2.8 °C to 23.6 °C | 8 °C to 30.4 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 34 mm to 68 mm | 36 mm to 106 mm |
| Dry months | 3 | 2 |
Where they differ
Interlaken is the one for open country: 19% of the land around it is protected against 4% around Venice, and the walking is the point of the trip.
Venice puts many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, along with many times as many museums and 5 UNESCO-listed sites within day-trip reach against Interlaken's 2. It also has 20 beaches nearby against 12, and four months of sea at 21°C or more, where Interlaken has none.
Where they are alike
Weather is where they sit closest. Both have real winters and warm summers: January highs of 3°C in Interlaken and 8°C in Venice, rising to 24°C and 30°C at the peak.
Eating out is modest in both, differently so: Venice has more restaurants near the centre, Interlaken a wider range of kitchens. Nightlife is limited either way, and the two have about the same number of nightclubs, in both cases close to the centre.
Which traveller are you?
Walkers and anyone who wants days out in the mountains should take Interlaken. 19% of the surrounding land is protected, and the trip is built around leaving town rather than staying in it.
Museum-goers are better served in Venice: many times as many museums, tightly grouped around the centre, and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2, so sightseeing needs little transport.
Families also do better in Venice, with 3 theme parks within reach where Interlaken has none, about three times as much park space near the centre, 20 beaches nearby and warm swimming in late summer.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €248 and €155, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of either city. A heavily visited city can sit well above its own national average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so neither says what your trip will cost.
No weather station near Interlaken records sunshine hours, so that side of the weather comparison is missing rather than low; its monthly picture rests on temperature and rainfall alone. Venice's sea peaks at 26°C in the month that is also its busiest, and September's water stays warm but it is the wettest month, at 106mm.
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). Venice: 1991-2020 normals, Treviso / S. Angelo (26.1 km from centre).
Interlaken is at its best from June to August, with highs of 22-24°C; July and August bring 61-62mm of rain, so June, at 48mm, is the steadier bet. September still reaches 18°C on 38mm.
Venice is warm for longer, 24-28°C through May and June, and the sea passes 21°C from June to September, peaking at 26°C in August. Autumn turns wet, with 106mm in September, so late spring is the cleaner choice.
Getting there
| Flying from | Interlaken | Venice |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 35 m €110-163 ZRH · 100 km | 2 h 0 m €46-119 1 stop VCE · 7 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 15 m €163-196 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 40 m €68-109 VCE · 7 km |
| MadridMAD | 2 h 5 m €158-220 1 stop ZRH · 100 km | 2 h 20 m €102-159 VCE · 7 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 1 h 40 m €114-151 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 45 m €41-56 VCE · 7 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 25 m €234-276 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 45 m €190-215 1 stop VCE · 7 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 45 m €110-133 ZRH · 100 km | 2 h 20 m €148-150 VCE · 7 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 6 h 15 m €232-366 1 stop ZRH · 100 km | 5 h 55 m €366-421 2 stops VCE · 7 km |
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 8 h 5 m €606-782 1 stop ZRH · 100 km | 8 h 30 m €637-650 VCE · 7 km |
| BeijingPEK, PKX | 10 h 10 m €710-815 1 stop MXP · 135 km | 9 h 55 m no fares VCE · 7 km |
| CancunCUN | 10 h 55 m no fares ZRH · 100 km | 11 h 10 m no fares VRN · 113 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 | Venice |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | 2 m |
| Main airport | Zürich Airport (ZRH)100 km from centre181 non-stop destinations | Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE)7 km from centre98 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 10 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Interlaken | Venice |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 6,123 | 250,369 |
| People per km² | 1,424 | 602 |
| Museums within 10 km | 3 | 52 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 2 | 5 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 22 | 46 |
| 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 Interlaken or Venice somewhere new.