VacationSelector

La Spezia or Montpellier?

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

Your match

La Spezia
43
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Montpellier
✓ Best match
47
match

Wins on places to eat 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 La Spezia if the sea is the point: the water starts at the centre, dozens of beaches sit nearby, and it stays swimmable from June into September.

Choose Montpellier if you want a city to walk and eat in, with far more restaurants and bars near the centre, more to see on foot and more for children, and the beach 9km away.

Scoreboard

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

La SpeziaMontpellier
Beaches & swimming. La Spezia leads by 41 points.41
La SpeziaMontpellier
Score7332
Swim season months42
Beaches 10 km328
Coast distance0 km9 km
Water distance0 km9 km
Places to eat. Montpellier leads by 34 points.34
La SpeziaMontpellier
Score3165
Restaurants within 2 km of centre235737
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1134
Museums & heritage. La Spezia leads by 16 points.16
La SpeziaMontpellier
Score4226
Museums within 10 km1514
Museums within 2 km of centre103
Share of museums within 2 km %6721
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Montpellier leads by 14 points.14
La SpeziaMontpellier
Score2438
Drinking venues within 4 km208318
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre176265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8583
Nightclubs within 4 km125
Nature & day trips. La Spezia leads by 9 points.9
La SpeziaMontpellier
Score5243
Protected land share 50 km %1315
Landscape blanket share 50 km %010
Land share of disc %5170
Park area within 2 km23 hectares55 hectares
Good for families. Montpellier leads by 24 points.24
La SpeziaMontpellier
Score2044
Tourist attractions within 2 km38
Park area within 2 km23 hectares55 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km27
Sights concentration. Montpellier leads by 31 points.31
La SpeziaMontpellier
Score738
Notable places within 2 km635
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. La Spezia leads by 6 points.6
La SpeziaMontpellier
Score6862
Price level global64.973.7
Daily budget€155€160
Year-round weather. Montpellier leads by 4 points.4
La SpeziaMontpellier
Score7074
Monthly daytime high11.4 °C to 30.3 °C12 °C to 29.6 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 132 mm17 mm to 93 mm
Dry months25
0255075100

Where they differ

La Spezia puts the sea at the centre, 0km from it, with 32 beaches nearby against Montpellier's 8, and water that stays at 21°C or more for a longer part of the year. That means walking to a swim rather than planning one.

Montpellier has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, about twice as many places to drink and many more nightclubs, and many more notable places within walking distance of the centre. Its own beach is 9km out.

Where they are alike

Both sit under similar skies: daytime highs run about 11-30°C across the year in each, with the same broad rhythm of a mild winter and a hot summer.

The national price levels behind them sit close together, at €155 and €160 a day, country estimates rather than city ones. Both also have open country within reach, with 13% of the land around La Spezia protected and 15% around Montpellier.

Which traveller are you?

If swimming is the point of the trip, La Spezia: the water begins at the centre, 32 beaches sit nearby, and the sea holds 21°C or more for a longer run of the year.

For a food and nightlife weekend, Montpellier: many more restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, more places to drink and considerably more nightclubs, most of them close in.

Families are better served in Montpellier, with 7 theme parks within reach against La Spezia's 2, more park space near the centre and about three times as many attractions to walk to.

What the numbers don't tell you

The beach count for La Spezia says what is there, not how it feels in August, when the warmest sea and the driest weather arrive together and so does everyone else. The same coast carries the wetter autumn of the two, 102-132mm a month from September to November, so going off-season trades crowds for rain.

The daily budget is a national estimate of restaurant and hotel price levels, one figure for Italy and one for France, not a measurement of either city. A city can sit further from its country's average than these two figures sit from each other.

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
La Spezia
11
13
16
18
23
27
30
30
26
21
16
12
Montpellier
12
13
16
19
23
27
30
29
25
21
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
La Spezia
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Montpellier
12
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
La Spezia
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Montpellier
56
35
39
56
46
33
17
36
88
93
78
59
Daylight, hours per day
La Spezia
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Montpellier
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
La Spezia
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3
Montpellier
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
10
8
6
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. La Spezia: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (64.8 km from centre). Montpellier: 1991-2020 normals, Montpellier (7.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

La Spezia is at its best from June to August: highs of 27-30°C, sea at 22-25°C and little rain, 32-41mm a month. September still has swimmable sea, but rain then climbs past 100mm and stays high into November.

Montpellier is the drier choice across the same weeks, with the driest stretch of its year in July at 17mm, and a drier late winter besides, around 35-39mm. Its sea tops out at 22°C, so the swimming season is shorter at both ends.

Getting there

Flying fromLa SpeziaMontpellier
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 65 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
BordeauxBOD
1 h 45 m
no fares
FLR · 115 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€88-193
PSA · 65 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
no fares
GOA · 86 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
MPL · 8 km
TunisTUN
1 h 40 m
no fares
BLQ · 125 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 25 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MRS · 109 km
MunichMUC
1 h 15 m
€207-240
1 stop
GOA · 86 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 109 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureLa SpeziaMontpellier
Official languageItalianFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m7 m
Main airportPisa International Airport (PSA)65 km from centre81 non-stop destinationsMontpellier-Méditerranée Airport (MPL)8 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLa SpeziaMontpellier
City population92,119310,240
People per km²1,7925,452
Museums within 10 km1214
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre2265
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow La Spezia or Montpellier 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). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.