VacationSelector

Lyon or Milan?

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

Your match

Lyon
52
match

Wins on places to eat with your weighting.

Milan
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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 Lyon if meals shape the trip: a much wider range of kitchens than Milan, and more park space close to the centre.

Choose Milan if you want a lot within walking distance: far more museums and attractions near the centre, plus wider protected countryside for days out, 30% of the surrounding land against 6% around Lyon.

Scoreboard

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

LyonMilan
Beaches & swimming. Lyon and Milan are level on 0.
LyonMilan
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km264
Coast distance253 km120 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 9 points.9
LyonMilan
Score7970
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,6911,991
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4020
Museums & heritage. Milan leads by 19 points.19
LyonMilan
Score5574
Museums within 10 km5387
Museums within 2 km of centre2555
Share of museums within 2 km %4763
Unesco sites within 50 km24
Nightlife. Milan leads by 17 points.17
LyonMilan
Score5875
Drinking venues within 4 km8662,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre611961
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7143
Nightclubs within 4 km4770
Nature & day trips. Milan leads by 32 points.32
LyonMilan
Score3365
Protected land share 50 km %630
Landscape blanket share 50 km %611
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km120 hectares102 hectares
Good for families. Milan leads by 18 points.18
LyonMilan
Score5977
Tourist attractions within 2 km2576
Park area within 2 km120 hectares102 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km25
Sights concentration. Milan leads by 20 points.20
LyonMilan
Score5474
Notable places within 2 km86266
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Milan leads by 6 points.6
LyonMilan
Score6268
Price level global73.764.9
Daily budget€160€155
Year-round weather. Lyon and Milan are level on 64.
LyonMilan
Score6464
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28 °C7 °C to 28.6 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 101 mm44 mm to 127 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Lyon's strength is the table: a much wider range of kitchens, though Milan has somewhat more restaurants near the centre. Park space near the centre is larger, and its bars and clubs mostly sit within a short walk of the middle.

Milan is the denser city: about twice as many museums, tightly grouped around the centre, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Lyon's 2. Roughly three times as many notable places lie within walking distance, and 30% of the surrounding land is protected against 6% around Lyon.

Where they are alike

Weather is what they share most closely. Both run daytime highs of about 7-28°C across the year, and neither gets a dry month: nowhere does the rain drop to 40mm or less, whatever the season.

Neither city is a base for swimming either; neither has a month of sea warm enough to bother with. The national price levels behind the two are close as well, €160 a day for France against €155 for Italy.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller who plans days around meals should take Lyon. The range of kitchens is much wider than Milan's, and the bars and clubs sit close enough to the centre to walk between them after dinner.

Families are better served in Milan, with about three times as many attractions near the centre and 5 theme parks within reach against Lyon's 2, though Lyon answers with more park space in the middle.

Anyone travelling for museums should also choose Milan: roughly twice as many as Lyon, grouped tightly around the centre, with 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Lyon's 2.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget is a national estimate, €160 for France and €155 for Italy, the price level for restaurants and hotels rather than a measurement of Lyon or Milan. A large or heavily visited city can sit well away from its own country average, so a gap that small tells you nothing about which trip costs more.

Milan's much larger nightlife scene is a count of places, and only about half of them sit near the centre, so an evening out can mean crossing a bigger city. Lyon draws on a smaller pool, but its bars and clubs are mostly walkable from the middle.

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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Milan
7
10
15
17
23
26
29
28
24
18
11
7
Rainfall, mm
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Milan
54
44
50
78
102
75
57
83
116
113
127
49
Daylight, hours per day
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Milan
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2
Milan
3
4
5
6
7
7
9
8
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre). Milan: 1991-2020 normals, Novara / Cameri (41.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Lyon is the better bet in early autumn. September holds 23°C with 84mm of rain against Milan's 116mm, so a trip either side of the summer peak is the safer one here; high summer itself is warm as well, close to 28°C.

Milan is at its best in July, its warmest month at 29°C and its driest of the summer at 57mm. May is already warm but comes with 102mm, and October and November are its wettest months, both heavier than Lyon's.

Getting there

Flying fromLyonMilan
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 20 m
€46-63
MXP · 40 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 40 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
1 h 30 m
€34-53
MXP · 40 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 30 m
€79-99
LYS · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€116-135
LIN · 7 km
MadridMAD
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 40 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
2 h 35 m
€78-142
MXP · 40 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 40 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
10 h 10 m
€710-815
1 stop
MXP · 40 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

MeasureLyonMilan
Official languageFrenchItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation160 m138 m
Main airportLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinationsMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)40 km from centre203 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLyonMilan
City population519,1271,354,196
People per km²10,8387,453
Museums within 10 km4287
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Distinct cuisines in the centre14879

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lyon or Milan 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). 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.