VacationSelector

Lyon or Rome?

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.

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips 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.

LyonRome
Beaches & swimming. Rome leads by 33 points.33
LyonRome
Score033
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km263
Coast distance253 km24 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 19 points.19
LyonRome
Score7960
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,6912,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4010
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 29 points.29
LyonRome
Score5584
Museums within 10 km53161
Museums within 2 km of centre2579
Share of museums within 2 km %4749
Unesco sites within 50 km27
Nightlife. Rome leads by 16 points.16
LyonRome
Score5874
Drinking venues within 4 km8662,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre611912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7145
Nightclubs within 4 km4785
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 37 points.37
LyonRome
Score3370
Protected land share 50 km %619
Landscape blanket share 50 km %60
Land share of disc %10078
Park area within 2 km120 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 27 points.27
LyonRome
Score5986
Tourist attractions within 2 km25126
Park area within 2 km120 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 45 points.45
LyonRome
Score5499
Notable places within 2 km861,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rome leads by 6 points.6
LyonRome
Score6268
Price level global73.764.9
Daily budget€160€155
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 7 points.7
LyonRome
Score6471
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 101 mm21 mm to 114 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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Lyon
No coastline within reach
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLyonRome
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
MadridMAD
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
2 h 15 m
€136-291
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
CataniaCTA
2 h 5 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
1 h 20 m
€60-112
FCO · 23 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
2 h 50 m
€91-168
FCO · 23 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
TunisTUN
1 h 55 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
FCO · 23 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

MeasureLyonRome
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 m21 m
Main airportLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLyonRome
City population519,1272,748,109
People per km²10,8382,135
Museums within 10 km42177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km27
Distinct cuisines in the centre14865
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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