VacationSelector

Istanbul or La Spezia?

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

Your match

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

La Spezia
43
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

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

IstanbulLa Spezia
Beaches & swimming. La Spezia leads by 30 points.30
IstanbulLa Spezia
Score4373
Swim season months34
Beaches 10 km232
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 39 points.39
IstanbulLa Spezia
Score7031
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086235
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2011
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 24 points.24
IstanbulLa Spezia
Score6642
Museums within 10 km14515
Museums within 2 km of centre7110
Share of museums within 2 km %4967
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 55 points.55
IstanbulLa Spezia
Score7924
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266208
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5285
Nightclubs within 4 km2211
Nature & day trips. La Spezia leads by 27 points.27
IstanbulLa Spezia
Score2552
Protected land share 50 km %113
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4851
Park area within 2 km60 hectares23 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 47 points.47
IstanbulLa Spezia
Score6720
Tourist attractions within 2 km683
Park area within 2 km60 hectares23 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 68 points.68
IstanbulLa Spezia
Score757
Notable places within 2 km2856
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulLa Spezia
Score8968
Price level global35.264.9
Daily budget€100€155
Year-round weather. La Spezia leads by 1 points.1
IstanbulLa Spezia
Score6970
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C11.4 °C to 30.3 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm32 mm to 132 mm
Dry months42
0255075100

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
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
La Spezia
11
13
16
18
23
27
30
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
La Spezia
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
La Spezia
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
La Spezia
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
La Spezia
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. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). La Spezia: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (64.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulLa Spezia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 65 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
GOA · 86 km
PalermoPMO
2 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
CataniaCTA
2 h 10 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 35 m
€55-66
PSA · 65 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€161-174
IST · 36 km
1 h 55 m
€210-262
1 stop
PSA · 65 km
BerlinBER
2 h 40 m
€125-140
IST · 36 km
1 h 50 m
€119-200
1 stop
PSA · 65 km
BucharestOTP, BBU
1 h 10 m
€106-133
IST · 36 km
2 h 10 m
€104-116
PSA · 65 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 125 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

MeasureIstanbulLa Spezia
Official languageTurkishItalian
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m3 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsPisa International Airport (PSA)65 km from centre81 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulLa Spezia
City population15,655,92492,119
People per km²2,9301,792
Museums within 10 km7212
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre6222
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Istanbul or La Spezia 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). 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. 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.