VacationSelector

Lucerne or Riga?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Wins on good for families and year-round weather with your weighting.

Riga
✓ Best match
53
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming 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.

LucerneRiga
Beaches & swimming. Riga leads by 40 points.40
LucerneRiga
Score040
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1657
Coast distance669 km12 km
Water distance12 km
Places to eat. Riga leads by 12 points.12
LucerneRiga
Score4759
Restaurants within 2 km of centre269470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2533
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 21 points.21
LucerneRiga
Score4061
Museums within 10 km2369
Museums within 2 km of centre1347
Share of museums within 2 km %5768
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Riga leads by 23 points.23
LucerneRiga
Score2851
Drinking venues within 4 km202584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7578
Nightclubs within 4 km1154
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 19 points.19
LucerneRiga
Score2544
Protected land share 50 km %710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10073
Park area within 2 km29 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Lucerne leads by 3 points.3
LucerneRiga
Score3835
Tourist attractions within 2 km157
Park area within 2 km29 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 27 points.27
LucerneRiga
Score3562
Notable places within 2 km29137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 41 points.41
LucerneRiga
Score3576
Price level global110.553.7
Daily budget€248€132
Year-round weather. Lucerne leads by 1 points.1
LucerneRiga
Score5352
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm33 mm to 87 mm
Dry months03
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
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
Riga
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneRiga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
BerlinBER
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 25 m
€207-228
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
OsloOSL, TRF
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
2 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 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 2026-08 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

MeasureLucerneRiga
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshLatvian
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation436 m6 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneRiga
City population86,234588,911
People per km²2,963
Museums within 10 km1412
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4655
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lucerne or Riga 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.