Ljubljana or Pisa?
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, 2 points apart
Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.
Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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 Ljubljana if the trip is about eating, evenings out and a compact centre you can cover on foot, and if you can accept steady summer rain and cold winter days near 4°C.
Choose Pisa if you want warmth and swimming: highs of 30°C in high summer, a sea worth using well past midsummer, mild winter days around 11°C, and a dry midsummer you can plan around.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Pisa leads by 21 points.21
| Ljubljana | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 21 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 10 | 1 |
| Coast distance | 72 km | 10 km |
| Water distance | — | 10 km |
Places to eat. Ljubljana leads by 21 points.21
| Ljubljana | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 34 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 292 | 379 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 40 | 9 |
Museums & heritage. Ljubljana and Pisa are level on 55.
| Ljubljana | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 55 |
| Museums within 10 km | 26 | 27 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 23 | 22 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 88 | 81 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 3 | 3 |
Nightlife. Ljubljana leads by 17 points.17
| Ljubljana | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 45 | 28 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 458 | 232 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 284 | 203 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 62 | 88 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 24 | 3 |
Nature & day trips. Ljubljana leads by 1 points.1
| Ljubljana | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 39 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 13 | 9 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 5 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 65 |
| Park area within 2 km | 75 hectares | 40 hectares |
Good for families. Pisa leads by 9 points.9
| Ljubljana | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 38 | 47 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 12 | 20 |
| Park area within 2 km | 75 hectares | 40 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 2 |
Sights concentration. Ljubljana leads by 11 points.11
| Ljubljana | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 58 | 47 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 109 | 58 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Ljubljana leads by 4 points.4
| Ljubljana | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72 | 68 |
| Price level global | 59.6 | 64.9 |
| Daily budget | €131 | €155 |
Year-round weather. Pisa leads by 14 points.14
| Ljubljana | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 56 | 70 |
| Monthly daytime high | 4.1 °C to 27.9 °C | 11.4 °C to 30.3 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 67 mm to 159 mm | 32 mm to 132 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 2 |
Where they differ
Ljubljana offers a much wider range of kitchens, even if Pisa has somewhat more restaurants near the centre, and the evenings run longer: about twice as many places to drink and many times as many nightclubs, most of them close in.
Pisa is the choice for water. Ljubljana has 10 beaches nearby against Pisa's 1, but only Pisa has a sea worth swimming in, four months at 21°C or more and 25°C in August. It also runs warmer through the year, spring to autumn and in winter alike.
Where they are alike
Heritage will not decide this. The two hold about the same number of museums, and each has 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.
Nature is close too, and modest in both cases: 13% of the land around Ljubljana is protected against 9% around Pisa, though Ljubljana has about twice as much park space near the centre. The national price estimates behind the two, €131 and €155, sit fairly near each other as well.
Which traveller are you?
Swimmers and sun-seekers should take Pisa. The sea reaches 25°C in August, its summer is the driest stretch of its year at 32-35mm, and daytime warmth holds from spring into autumn.
Anyone travelling for eating and going out belongs in Ljubljana: a much wider range of kitchens, roughly twice as many places to drink, far more nightclubs, and more to see on foot around the centre.
Families lean to Pisa, with about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre and 2 theme parks within reach. Ljubljana answers with roughly twice the central park space and an equal museum offering.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €131 and €155, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of either city. A capital and a heavily visited small city can each sit a long way from their own country's average, by more than the gap between the two estimates, so neither number tells you which trip will cost more.
The beach count misleads as well. Ljubljana has 10 beaches nearby, but the data records no sea temperature there at all, and its warmest months are also among its wettest, so swimming is a fair-weather bet rather than a season.
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. Ljubljana: 1991-2020 normals, Ljubljana / Bezigrad (1.9 km from centre). Pisa: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (3.9 km from centre).
Ljubljana is at its best from June to August, with highs of 26-28°C, though the rain does not let up at 121-126mm a month. September and October are wetter still, above 150mm, so autumn is a gamble.
Pisa's window runs May to September. July and August are its driest months at 32-35mm, with highs of 30°C and sea at 24-25°C. Winter days near 11°C stay walkable, where Ljubljana sits at 4°C.
Getting there
| Flying from | Ljubljana | Pisa |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 5 m no fares LJU · 20 km | 2 h 5 m €48-62 PSA · 4 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 10 m no fares TRS · 84 km | 55 m €136-139 1 stop FLR · 65 km |
| TiranaTIA | 1 h 30 m no fares TRS · 84 km | 1 h 35 m no fares PSA · 4 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 45 m €139-178 1 stop LJU · 20 km | 1 h 40 m no fares PSA · 4 km |
| PalermoPMO | 1 h 40 m no fares TRS · 84 km | 1 h 25 m no fares PSA · 4 km |
| CataniaCTA | 1 h 45 m no fares TRS · 84 km | 1 h 35 m €55-66 PSA · 4 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 10 m €188-190 LJU · 20 km | 2 h 25 m €154-191 1 stop BLQ · 115 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 25 m no fares LJU · 20 km | 1 h 30 m no fares PSA · 4 km |
| BariBRI | 1 h 20 m no fares TRS · 84 km | 1 h 20 m no fares PSA · 4 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 5 h 45 m €374-528 2 stops LJU · 20 km | 5 h 55 m no fares BLQ · 115 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 2026-10, 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
| Measure | Ljubljana | Pisa |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Slovene | Italian |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CF230 V, 50 Hz | CFL230 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 | 309 m | 4 m |
| Main airport | Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport (LJU)20 km from centre28 non-stop destinations | Pisa International Airport (PSA)4 km from centre81 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 21 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Ljubljana | Pisa |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 284,293 | 88,737 |
| People per km² | 1,736 | 479 |
| Museums within 10 km | 14 | 27 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 3 | 3 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 63 | 29 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | – | 4 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ljubljana or Pisa somewhere new.