VacationSelector

Kyoto or Milan?

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

Your match

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Milan
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

Scoreboard

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

KyotoMilan
Beaches & swimming. Kyoto leads by 17 points.17
KyotoMilan
Score170
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km04
Coast distance47 km120 km
Water distance47 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 14 points.14
KyotoMilan
Score8470
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,0231,991
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2220
Museums & heritage. Milan leads by 2 points.2
KyotoMilan
Score7274
Museums within 10 km13287
Museums within 2 km of centre5155
Share of museums within 2 km %3963
Unesco sites within 50 km44
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 5 points.5
KyotoMilan
Score8075
Drinking venues within 4 km3,2152,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,363961
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7343
Nightclubs within 4 km2670
Nature & day trips. Milan leads by 43 points.43
KyotoMilan
Score2265
Protected land share 50 km %230
Landscape blanket share 50 km %211
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km45 hectares102 hectares
Good for families. Milan leads by 11 points.11
KyotoMilan
Score6677
Tourist attractions within 2 km6276
Park area within 2 km45 hectares102 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km45
Sights concentration. Milan leads by 22 points.22
KyotoMilan
Score5274
Notable places within 2 km79266
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 2 points.2
KyotoMilan
Score7068
Price level global62.464.9
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Milan leads by 2 points.2
KyotoMilan
Score6264
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C7 °C to 28.6 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 mm44 mm to 127 mm
Dry months00
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
Milan
7
10
15
17
23
26
29
28
24
18
11
7
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Milan
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Milan
54
44
50
78
102
75
57
83
116
113
127
49
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Milan
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
Milan
3
4
5
6
7
7
9
8
5
4
2
2

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). Milan: 1991-2020 normals, Novara / Cameri (41.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoMilan
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
11 h 5 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
1 h 20 m
€46-63
MXP · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 40 km
TokyoHND, NRT
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 81 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 40 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 15 m
€116-135
LIN · 7 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 81 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 40 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 40 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

MeasureKyotoMilan
Official languageJapaneseItalian
CurrencyYen (JPY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119112
Elevation51 m138 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)40 km from centre203 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoMilan
City population1,463,7231,354,196
People per km²1,7687,453
Museums within 10 km7687
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km44
Distinct cuisines in the centre8979
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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