La Spezia or Rovinj?
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 and nightlife with your weighting.
Wins on value for money 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 you want a base with somewhere to go beyond the town: protected countryside around it, more museums, and more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, plus the drier midsummer of the two.
Choose Rovinj if the trip is mostly swimming and walking one small centre: more beaches within reach, sea at 26°C in August, and little pull to head inland at all.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. La Spezia and Rovinj are level on 73.
| La Spezia | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 73 | 73 |
| Swim season months | 4 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 32 | 55 |
| Coast distance | 0 km | 1 km |
| Water distance | 0 km | 1 km |
Places to eat. La Spezia leads by 4 points.4
| La Spezia | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 31 | 27 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 235 | 130 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 11 | 14 |
Museums & heritage. La Spezia leads by 14 points.14
| La Spezia | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 42 | 28 |
| Museums within 10 km | 15 | 5 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 10 | 4 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 67 | 80 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 2 | 1 |
Nightlife. La Spezia leads by 15 points.15
| La Spezia | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 24 | 9 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 208 | 75 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 176 | 66 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 85 | 88 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 1 | 5 |
Nature & day trips. La Spezia leads by 42 points.42
| La Spezia | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 52 | 10 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 13 | 2 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 51 | 38 |
| Park area within 2 km | 23 hectares | 8 hectares |
Good for families. La Spezia leads by 1 points.1
| La Spezia | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 20 | 19 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 3 | 6 |
| Park area within 2 km | 23 hectares | 8 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 2 | 3 |
Sights concentration. La Spezia leads by 7 points.7
| La Spezia | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 7 | 0 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 6 | 2 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Rovinj leads by 12 points.12
| La Spezia | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 80 |
| Price level global | 64.9 | 48.5 |
| Daily budget | €155 | €138 |
Year-round weather. La Spezia leads by 5 points.5
| La Spezia | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 70 | 65 |
| Monthly daytime high | 11.4 °C to 30.3 °C | 8.8 °C to 29.1 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 32 mm to 132 mm | 51 mm to 125 mm |
| Dry months | 2 | 0 |
Where they differ
La Spezia is the better base for getting out of town: 13% of the surrounding land is protected against 2% around Rovinj, and there is far more park space near the centre. It also has more museums, more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and more places to drink.
Rovinj answers with more beaches nearby, 55 against La Spezia's 32, more tourist attractions close to the centre, a wider range of kitchens and more nightclubs. Croatia's national price level sits below Italy's, at €138 a day against €155.
Where they are alike
Both are swimming trips first. The sea is 0km from La Spezia's centre and 1km from Rovinj's, and each has four months with the sea at 21°C or more.
They are close on eating out and on family appeal too. La Spezia has more restaurants near the centre, Rovinj a wider spread of kitchens, and neither is built around children, with only a handful of theme parks within reach of either.
Which traveller are you?
Walkers and day-trippers: La Spezia. With 13% of the land around it protected and far more park space near the centre, plus more UNESCO-listed places within reach, it gives you somewhere to go on a non-beach day.
Swimmers: close, but Rovinj edges it on choice, with 55 beaches nearby against 32 and sea at 26°C in August. La Spezia puts the water at the centre itself, which suits shorter stays.
A night out: La Spezia has more bars and a more concentrated centre to walk between them; Rovinj has more nightclubs but a much smaller centre overall. Neither is a late-night destination.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €155 for Italy and €138 for Croatia, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of La Spezia or Rovinj. A small, heavily visited coastal town can sit well above its country's average, and that gap can exceed the one between them.
The beach counts say nothing about crowding: Rovinj's beaches serve a town of 13,000 residents, and the sea is at swimming temperature for only four months in either place, so warm water and peak visitors arrive in the same weeks.
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. La Spezia: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (64.8 km from centre). Rovinj: 1991-2020 normals, Trieste (63.7 km from centre).
La Spezia's window is June to August: highs of 27-30°C and the driest stretch of its year at 32-41mm a month, with the sea reaching 25°C. September holds the heat but rain climbs past 100mm.
Rovinj peaks in July and August, 29°C with the sea at 25-26°C, though summer rain still runs 61-78mm rather than stepping aside, so a week there is likelier to include a grey day. Both turn wet through late autumn.
Getting there
| Flying from | La Spezia | Rovinj |
|---|---|---|
| MadridMAD | 2 h 5 m €88-193 PSA · 65 km | 2 h 20 m €102-159 VCE · 111 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 5 m €48-62 PSA · 65 km | 2 h 10 m no fares PUY · 31 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 10 m no fares GOA · 86 km | 1 h 10 m no fares TRS · 84 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 55 m €210-262 1 stop PSA · 65 km | 1 h 45 m €190-215 1 stop VCE · 111 km |
| BucharestOTP, BBU | 2 h 10 m €104-116 PSA · 65 km | 1 h 55 m €50-66 TSF · 129 km |
| TiranaTIA | 1 h 35 m no fares PSA · 65 km | 1 h 30 m no fares TRS · 84 km |
| ViennaVIE | 1 h 25 m €185-255 1 stop FLR · 115 km | 1 h 10 m €65-121 VCE · 111 km |
| ManchesterMAN | 2 h 20 m no fares PSA · 65 km | 2 h 15 m €79-96 VCE · 111 km |
| PalermoPMO | 1 h 25 m no fares PSA · 65 km | 1 h 40 m no fares TRS · 84 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 5 h 55 m no fares BLQ · 125 km | 5 h 55 m €366-421 2 stops VCE · 111 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
| Measure | La Spezia | Rovinj |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Italian | Croatian |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CFL230 V, 50 Hz | CF230 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 | 3 m | 0 m |
| Main airport | Pisa International Airport (PSA)65 km from centre81 non-stop destinations | Pula Airport (PUY)31 km from centre34 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 14 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | La Spezia | Rovinj |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 92,119 | 12,968 |
| People per km² | 1,792 | – |
| Museums within 10 km | 12 | 1 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 2 | 1 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 22 | 22 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 4 months | 4 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow La Spezia or Rovinj somewhere new.