VacationSelector

Kyoto 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

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Marseille
57
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.

KyotoMarseille
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 50 points.50
KyotoMarseille
Score1767
Swim season months52
Beaches 10 km064
Coast distance47 km0 km
Water distance47 km0 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 9 points.9
KyotoMarseille
Score8475
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,0231,320
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2239
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 22 points.22
KyotoMarseille
Score7250
Museums within 10 km13233
Museums within 2 km of centre5123
Share of museums within 2 km %3970
Unesco sites within 50 km41
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 32 points.32
KyotoMarseille
Score8048
Drinking venues within 4 km3,215544
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,363454
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7383
Nightclubs within 4 km2630
Nature & day trips. Marseille leads by 15 points.15
KyotoMarseille
Score2237
Protected land share 50 km %215
Landscape blanket share 50 km %213
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km45 hectares25 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 22 points.22
KyotoMarseille
Score6644
Tourist attractions within 2 km6217
Park area within 2 km45 hectares25 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km44
Sights concentration. Marseille leads by 6 points.6
KyotoMarseille
Score5258
Notable places within 2 km79111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 8 points.8
KyotoMarseille
Score7062
Price level global62.473.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 13 points.13
KyotoMarseille
Score6275
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C11.8 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 mm11 mm to 82 mm
Dry months06
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
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
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. Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre). Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoMarseille
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 81 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MunichMUC
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
11 h 30 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 40 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

MeasureKyotoMarseille
Official languageJapaneseFrench
CurrencyYen (JPY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119112
Elevation51 m0 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoMarseille
City population1,463,723886,040
People per km²1,7683,683
Museums within 10 km7627
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km41
Distinct cuisines in the centre8993
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Kyoto 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.