VacationSelector

Milan or Pisa?

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

Your match

Milan
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Pisa
45
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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 Milan if you want the eating and drinking to carry the trip, with a much wider range of restaurants, bars and clubs, plus more to fill days with children: 5 theme parks within reach and far more attractions and park space near the centre.

Choose Pisa if you want a small city, more sun and some swimming, with sea above 21°C for four months and a drier midsummer.

Scoreboard

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

MilanPisa
Beaches & swimming. Pisa leads by 21 points.21
MilanPisa
Score021
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km41
Coast distance120 km10 km
Water distance—10 km
Places to eat. Milan leads by 36 points.36
MilanPisa
Score7034
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,991379
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km209
Museums & heritage. Milan leads by 19 points.19
MilanPisa
Score7455
Museums within 10 km8727
Museums within 2 km of centre5522
Share of museums within 2 km %6381
Unesco sites within 50 km43
Nightlife. Milan leads by 47 points.47
MilanPisa
Score7528
Drinking venues within 4 km2,215232
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre961203
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4388
Nightclubs within 4 km703
Nature & day trips. Milan leads by 26 points.26
MilanPisa
Score6539
Protected land share 50 km %309
Landscape blanket share 50 km %110
Land share of disc %10065
Park area within 2 km102 hectares40 hectares
Good for families. Milan leads by 30 points.30
MilanPisa
Score7747
Tourist attractions within 2 km7620
Park area within 2 km102 hectares40 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km52
Sights concentration. Milan leads by 27 points.27
MilanPisa
Score7447
Notable places within 2 km26658
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Milan and Pisa are level on 68.
MilanPisa
Score6868
Price level global64.964.9
Daily budget€155€155
Year-round weather. Pisa leads by 6 points.6
MilanPisa
Score6470
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28.6 °C11.4 °C to 30.3 °C
Monthly rainfall44 mm to 127 mm32 mm to 132 mm
Dry months02
0255075100

Where they differ

Milan has the wider choice of places to eat, with many times as many restaurants near the centre and a broader range of kitchens, and its nightlife is on another scale for both bars and clubs. For families it has far more attractions and park space close to the centre, plus 5 theme parks within reach against Pisa's 2.

Pisa is the one with swimming: sea at 21°C or more for four months, which Milan never reaches, and it runs warmer overall, 11-30°C against Milan's 7-29°C.

Where they are alike

Weather is where the two sit closest. Both are hottest in mid-summer and coolest in January, and both stay usable from spring through early autumn rather than for a short window.

Heritage is the other common ground: each has UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, 4 for Milan and 3 for Pisa, so a trip built around museums and old buildings works in either. Neither is really a swimming base.

Which traveller are you?

Someone travelling for food and nights out should go to Milan: many times as many restaurants and bars near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, and clubs at a scale Pisa does not have.

Families are better served in Milan too, with far more attractions and park space near the centre and 5 theme parks within reach against Pisa's 2, plus more museums for wet days.

Anyone after sun and sea should pick Pisa: sea at 25°C in August, only 32-41mm of rain in midsummer, and a compact centre where most of the drinking places sit close together.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figures for these two are identical by construction. They reflect a national price level rather than either city, so the comparison carries no information about which trip costs less. The daily budget of about €155 is one national estimate applied to both, not a measurement of Milan or Pisa, so check real prices for your dates.

Warm months are not dry months. Pisa's sea is still 23°C in September and the air stays warm, but rainfall climbs to 102mm that month and higher in October, and Milan's September is wetter again.

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
Milan
7
10
15
17
23
26
29
28
24
18
11
7
Pisa
11
13
16
18
23
27
30
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Milan
No coastline within reach
Pisa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Milan
54
44
50
78
102
75
57
83
116
113
127
49
Pisa
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Daylight, hours per day
Milan
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Pisa
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Milan
3
4
5
6
7
7
9
8
5
4
2
2
Pisa
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Milan: 1991-2020 normals, Novara / Cameri (41.2 km from centre). Pisa: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Milan is at its best from June to August, when highs run 26-29°C and rain eases. Its early autumn is the problem: September to November bring 113-127mm a month, so a warm-looking September is a wet one.

Pisa holds up longer. June to August reach 27-30°C with only 32-41mm of rain and sea at 22-25°C, its shoulder weeks stay usable, and January highs of 11°C against Milan's 7°C make a winter visit more plausible.

Getting there

Flying fromMilanPisa
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€48-103
MXP · 40 km
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 4 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 45 m
€31-93
BGY · 46 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 20 m
€46-63
MXP · 40 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 15 m
€116-135
LIN · 7 km
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 65 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 45 m
€27-28
MXP · 40 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 55 m
€36-88
MXP · 40 km
1 h 35 m
€55-66
PSA · 4 km
CagliariCAG
1 h 30 m
€128-151
LIN · 7 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
MadridMAD
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 40 km
2 h 5 m
€88-193
PSA · 4 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 30 m
€34-53
MXP · 40 km
1 h 35 m
€113-168
FLR · 65 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 40 km
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 115 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

MeasureMilanPisa
Official languageItalianItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation138 m4 m
Main airportMilan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)40 km from centre203 non-stop destinationsPisa International Airport (PSA)4 km from centre81 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMilanPisa
City population1,354,19688,737
People per km²7,453479
Museums within 10 km8727
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km43
Distinct cuisines in the centre7929
Swim season, months above 21 °C–4 months

Where else could you go?

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