VacationSelector

Madrid or Milan?

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

Your match

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on places to eat and year-round weather with your weighting.

Milan
63
match

Wins on 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.

MadridMilan
Beaches & swimming. Madrid and Milan are level on 0.
MadridMilan
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km44
Coast distance305 km120 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 13 points.13
MadridMilan
Score8370
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,5081,991
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2820
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 1 points.1
MadridMilan
Score7574
Museums within 10 km9787
Museums within 2 km of centre5955
Share of museums within 2 km %6163
Unesco sites within 50 km44
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 6 points.6
MadridMilan
Score8175
Drinking venues within 4 km2,4142,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,498961
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6243
Nightclubs within 4 km34170
Nature & day trips. Milan leads by 2 points.2
MadridMilan
Score6365
Protected land share 50 km %1930
Landscape blanket share 50 km %011
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km187 hectares102 hectares
Good for families. Madrid and Milan are level on 77.
MadridMilan
Score7777
Tourist attractions within 2 km6176
Park area within 2 km187 hectares102 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km35
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 1 points.1
MadridMilan
Score7574
Notable places within 2 km288266
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 3 points.3
MadridMilan
Score7168
Price level global60.864.9
Daily budget€122€155
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 8 points.8
MadridMilan
Score7264
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 32.7 °C7 °C to 28.6 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 64 mm44 mm to 127 mm
Dry months70
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
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Milan
7
10
15
17
23
26
29
28
24
18
11
7
Rainfall, mm
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Milan
54
44
50
78
102
75
57
83
116
113
127
49
Daylight, hours per day
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Milan
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4
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. Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre). Milan: 1991-2020 normals, Novara / Cameri (41.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMadridMilan
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 40 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
1 h 20 m
€46-63
MXP · 40 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
1 h 30 m
€34-53
MXP · 40 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
1 h 15 m
€116-135
LIN · 7 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
2 h 35 m
€78-142
MXP · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 25 m
€175-213
MAD · 14 km
1 h 40 m
€129-158
LIN · 7 km
DohaDOH
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
5 h 50 m
no fares
MXP · 40 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 30 m
€636-955
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
11 h 50 m
€1,114-1167
2 stops
MXP · 40 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
MAD · 14 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

MeasureMadridMilan
Official languageSpanishItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation663 m138 m
Main airportAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinationsMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)40 km from centre203 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMadridMilan
City population3,506,7301,354,196
People per km²5,8017,453
Museums within 10 km8887
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km44
Distinct cuisines in the centre10679

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Madrid 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.