VacationSelector

La Spezia or Sofia?

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 year-round weather with your weighting.

Sofia
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife 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.

La SpeziaSofia
Beaches & swimming. La Spezia leads by 73 points.73
La SpeziaSofia
Score730
Swim season months40
Beaches 10 km320
Coast distance0 km214 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Sofia leads by 33 points.33
La SpeziaSofia
Score3164
Restaurants within 2 km of centre235845
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1128
Museums & heritage. Sofia leads by 15 points.15
La SpeziaSofia
Score4257
Museums within 10 km1551
Museums within 2 km of centre1040
Share of museums within 2 km %6778
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Sofia leads by 37 points.37
La SpeziaSofia
Score2461
Drinking venues within 4 km208958
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre176608
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8563
Nightclubs within 4 km1102
Nature & day trips. La Spezia leads by 1 points.1
La SpeziaSofia
Score5251
Protected land share 50 km %1312
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %51100
Park area within 2 km23 hectares229 hectares
Good for families. Sofia leads by 35 points.35
La SpeziaSofia
Score2055
Tourist attractions within 2 km320
Park area within 2 km23 hectares229 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Sofia leads by 50 points.50
La SpeziaSofia
Score757
Notable places within 2 km6104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Sofia leads by 31 points.31
La SpeziaSofia
Score6899
Price level global64.921.4
Daily budget€155€77
Year-round weather. La Spezia leads by 6 points.6
La SpeziaSofia
Score7064
Monthly daytime high11.4 °C to 30.3 °C3.5 °C to 28.4 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 132 mm36 mm to 78 mm
Dry months23
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
La Spezia
11
13
16
18
23
27
30
30
26
21
16
12
Sofia
4
7
11
17
21
25
28
28
23
18
11
5
Sea temperature, °C
La Spezia
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Sofia
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
La Spezia
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Sofia
36
36
45
52
73
78
64
56
54
56
38
41
Daylight, hours per day
La Spezia
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sofia
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
Sofia
3
4
6
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
2

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). Sofia: 1991-2020 normals, Sofia Observ. (7.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLa SpeziaSofia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 65 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
no fares
GOA · 86 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 8 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 30 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 8 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 35 m
€55-66
PSA · 65 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 25 m
€185-255
1 stop
FLR · 115 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 8 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 45 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
2 h 40 m
€71-94
SOF · 8 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 25 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
SOF · 8 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 35 m
no fares
BLQ · 125 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 8 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 SpeziaSofia
Official languageItalianBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m560 m
Main airportPisa International Airport (PSA)65 km from centre81 non-stop destinationsSofia Airport (SOF)8 km from centre94 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureLa SpeziaSofia
City population92,1191,213,134
People per km²1,7922,466
Museums within 10 km1242
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre2251
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months

Where else could you go?

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