VacationSelector

Lucerne or Valletta?

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

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Valletta
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

LucerneValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 77 points.77
LucerneValletta
Score077
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km1622
Coast distance669 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Valletta leads by 11 points.11
LucerneValletta
Score4758
Restaurants within 2 km of centre269416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2535
Museums & heritage. Valletta leads by 21 points.21
LucerneValletta
Score4061
Museums within 10 km2346
Museums within 2 km of centre1329
Share of museums within 2 km %5763
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Valletta leads by 19 points.19
LucerneValletta
Score2847
Drinking venues within 4 km202522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7548
Nightclubs within 4 km1127
Nature & day trips. Valletta leads by 21 points.21
LucerneValletta
Score2546
Protected land share 50 km %7
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %1006
Park area within 2 km29 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Valletta leads by 8 points.8
LucerneValletta
Score3846
Tourist attractions within 2 km1532
Park area within 2 km29 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Valletta leads by 26 points.26
LucerneValletta
Score3561
Notable places within 2 km29133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valletta leads by 34 points.34
LucerneValletta
Score3569
Price level global110.562.8
Daily budget€248€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 26 points.26
LucerneValletta
Score5379
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months06
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5

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). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 30 m
€70-92
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 15 m
€177-222
MLA · 6 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 25 m
€174-215
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 15 m
€111-180
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 5 m
€56-95
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureLucerneValletta
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshEnglish, Maltese
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation436 m56 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneValletta
City population86,2346,444
People per km²2,9638,055
Museums within 10 km1415
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre4655
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lucerne or Valletta 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.