VacationSelector

La Spezia or Zurich?

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

La Spezia
43
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat 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 trip is built around swimming and warm, dry summer weather: four months with the sea at 21°C or more, beaches close by and highs reaching 30°C.

Choose Zurich if you want a city you can walk through rather than travel out from, with far more to see inside the centre, a much wider choice of restaurants and a proper night-time scene.

Scoreboard

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

La SpeziaZurich
Beaches & swimming. La Spezia leads by 73 points.73
La SpeziaZurich
Score730
Swim season months40
Beaches 10 km3223
Coast distance0 km632 km
Water distance0 km—
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 36 points.36
La SpeziaZurich
Score3167
Restaurants within 2 km of centre235974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1130
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 14 points.14
La SpeziaZurich
Score4256
Museums within 10 km1576
Museums within 2 km of centre1037
Share of museums within 2 km %6749
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 30 points.30
La SpeziaZurich
Score2454
Drinking venues within 4 km208676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre176553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8582
Nightclubs within 4 km174
Nature & day trips. La Spezia leads by 15 points.15
La SpeziaZurich
Score5237
Protected land share 50 km %1316
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %51100
Park area within 2 km23 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Zurich leads by 16 points.16
La SpeziaZurich
Score2036
Tourist attractions within 2 km38
Park area within 2 km23 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 52 points.52
La SpeziaZurich
Score759
Notable places within 2 km6119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. La Spezia leads by 33 points.33
La SpeziaZurich
Score6835
Price level global64.9110.5
Daily budget€155€248
Year-round weather. La Spezia leads by 17 points.17
La SpeziaZurich
Score7053
Monthly daytime high11.4 °C to 30.3 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 132 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months20
0255075100

Where they differ

La Spezia is the swimming trip: 32 beaches nearby against Zurich's 23, and four months when the sea sits at 21°C or more, which Zurich never offers at all. It is also the warmer place across the year, with daytime highs of 11-30°C against 4-24°C.

Zurich puts far more within walking distance of the centre, and has many times as many restaurants covering a wider range of kitchens. It also has about three times as many places to drink and many more clubs, most of them central.

Where they are alike

Museums and heritage put them closest. La Spezia's sit tightly around the centre while Zurich has many times more of them, and both have UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, two from La Spezia and one from Zurich.

Both also have countryside within reach, with 16% of the land around Zurich protected and 13% around La Spezia, and both have 2 theme parks nearby, though Zurich holds more park space and more attractions close to the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling for the water should take La Spezia: 32 beaches nearby and four months with the sea at 21°C or more, where Zurich has no swimming season to speak of.

A traveller who wants to step out of the hotel and find things immediately should take Zurich, with far more notable places within walking distance, many times more restaurants and roughly three times as many places to drink.

Families lean towards Zurich, which has more attractions and about twice as much park space near the centre, though both have 2 theme parks within reach and La Spezia adds warm-sea beaches for older children.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €155 and €248, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of La Spezia or Zurich. A heavily visited city can sit a long way from its own country's average, further than the gap between those figures, so they say little reliable about what either trip costs.

La Spezia's swimming advantage sits in a narrow window: the sea holds 21°C or more for four months, and the wet autumn follows straight after, so the best beach weather and the busiest weeks are the same weeks. Its beaches and UNESCO day trips also lie outside the city, so allow travel time.

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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
La Spezia
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
La Spezia
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
La Spezia
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zurich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
La Spezia
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

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). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

La Spezia suits June to September. Midsummer brings highs of 30°C and the driest stretch of its year, 32-35mm of rain, with sea warm enough to swim in, up to 25°C. Autumn then turns much wetter, above 100mm a month, and the beach case fades.

Zurich is warmest in July and August at 24°C, though those are also among its wettest months, near 120mm. September eases off and still reaches 19°C, which makes early autumn the steadier choice there.

Getting there

Flying fromLa SpeziaZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 65 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
no fares
GOA · 86 km
1 h 30 m
€70-92
ZRH · 9 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
BSL · 81 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
1 h 50 m
€119-200
1 stop
PSA · 65 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 55 m
€210-262
1 stop
PSA · 65 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 25 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€88-193
PSA · 65 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 45 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 125 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 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 SpeziaZurich
Official languageItalianFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m408 m
Main airportPisa International Airport (PSA)65 km from centre81 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureLa SpeziaZurich
City population92,119452,421
People per km²1,7925,147
Museums within 10 km1263
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre2278
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 Zurich 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.