Ljubljana or Venice?
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 places to eat with your weighting.
Wins on beaches & swimming 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 Ljubljana if you want green space and protected country within reach, a wider range of kitchens and more places to drink late, and you don't mind that swimming plays no part in the trip.
Choose Venice if you want museums and notable buildings packed into walking distance, attractions and theme parks that suit children, and sea warm enough to swim in from June to September.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Venice leads by 69 points.69
| Ljubljana | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 69 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 10 | 20 |
| Coast distance | 72 km | 4 km |
| Water distance | — | 4 km |
Places to eat. Ljubljana leads by 10 points.10
| Ljubljana | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 45 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 292 | 750 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 40 | 10 |
Museums & heritage. Venice leads by 17 points.17
| Ljubljana | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 72 |
| Museums within 10 km | 26 | 57 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 23 | 45 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 88 | 79 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 3 | 5 |
Nightlife. Ljubljana leads by 10 points.10
| Ljubljana | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 45 | 35 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 458 | 342 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 284 | 306 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 62 | 89 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 24 | 3 |
Nature & day trips. Ljubljana leads by 23 points.23
| Ljubljana | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 40 | 17 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 13 | 4 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 5 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 70 |
| Park area within 2 km | 75 hectares | 15 hectares |
Good for families. Venice leads by 19 points.19
| Ljubljana | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 38 | 57 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 12 | 72 |
| Park area within 2 km | 75 hectares | 15 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 3 |
Sights concentration. Venice leads by 25 points.25
| Ljubljana | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 58 | 83 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 109 | 464 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Ljubljana leads by 4 points.4
| Ljubljana | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72 | 68 |
| Price level global | 59.6 | 64.9 |
| Daily budget | €131 | €155 |
Year-round weather. Venice leads by 10 points.10
| Ljubljana | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 56 | 66 |
| Monthly daytime high | 4.1 °C to 27.9 °C | 8 °C to 30.4 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 67 mm to 159 mm | 36 mm to 106 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 2 |
Where they differ
Ljubljana is the greener trip. 13% of the land around it is protected against 4% around Venice, and it has many times as much park space near the centre, so walks and days out of town are easy to fill. Swimming is not part of it.
Venice packs many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and has about twice as many museums, so a day on foot covers far more. It also has 20 beaches nearby against Ljubljana's 10, and sea above 21°C for four months.
Where they are alike
Cost separates them least. The national estimates behind the two, €131 a day for Ljubljana's country and €155 for Venice's, sit close together, and both are country-level price levels for restaurants and hotels rather than anything measured in either city.
Eating out, evenings and weather are near-matched too. Venice has more restaurants near the centre, Ljubljana a wider spread of kitchens; both keep their bars close in; and both have warm summers with January highs of 4-8°C.
Which traveller are you?
Families are better served in Venice: many times as many tourist attractions near the centre, 3 theme parks within reach where Ljubljana has none, and sea at 23-26°C through summer. Ljubljana answers with park space rather than paid attractions.
Anyone who wants heritage on foot should take Venice, with roughly twice the museums and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 3, most of it within a short walk of the centre.
Travellers after late evenings and varied kitchens, with protected country for day trips, will get more from Ljubljana: more places to drink, many times more nightclubs, and 13% of the surrounding land protected.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €131 and €155, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of either city. A capital or a heavily visited city can sit far from its country's average, by more than the gap between these two, so neither figure tells you what your trip will cost.
Venice's beach and sea figures describe coast reached from the city, not swimming at the door, and the warmest water arrives in August, when the walkable core is at its busiest. Ljubljana's warmest months are also among its wettest, at 121-126mm.
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). Venice: 1991-2020 normals, Treviso / S. Angelo (26.1 km from centre).
Ljubljana is best from June to August, with highs of 26-28°C, though rain is steady at 121-126mm and September and October are its wettest months at 150-159mm.
Venice holds a longer stretch: May and June bring highs of 24-28°C with 75-91mm of rain, and the sea runs 23-26°C from June to September. Winter also favours it, with January and February at 36-38mm against Ljubljana's 67-85mm, and highs of 8-10°C against 4-7°C.
Getting there
| Flying from | Ljubljana | Venice |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 5 m no fares LJU · 20 km | 2 h 0 m €46-119 1 stop VCE · 7 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 10 m no fares TRS · 84 km | 1 h 10 m €81-119 VCE · 7 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 45 m €139-178 1 stop LJU · 20 km | 1 h 40 m €68-109 VCE · 7 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 10 m €188-190 LJU · 20 km | 2 h 20 m €148-150 VCE · 7 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 25 m no fares LJU · 20 km | 1 h 20 m €136-186 1 stop VCE · 7 km |
| ViennaVIE | 1 h 0 m no fares ZAG · 126 km | 1 h 10 m €65-121 VCE · 7 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 1 h 55 m no fares TRS · 84 km | 1 h 45 m €41-56 VCE · 7 km |
| CataniaCTA | 1 h 45 m no fares TRS · 84 km | 1 h 45 m no fares VCE · 7 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 5 h 45 m €374-528 2 stops LJU · 20 km | 5 h 55 m €366-421 2 stops VCE · 7 km |
| TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ | 9 h 0 m no fares ZAG · 126 km | 8 h 45 m no fares VCE · 7 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 | Venice |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | 2 m |
| Main airport | Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport (LJU)20 km from centre28 non-stop destinations | Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE)7 km from centre98 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 21 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Ljubljana | Venice |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 284,293 | 250,369 |
| People per km² | 1,736 | 602 |
| Museums within 10 km | 14 | 52 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 3 | 5 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 63 | 46 |
| 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 Venice somewhere new.