Monaco or Siena?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.
Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife 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 Monaco if the sea is the point of the trip: swimmable water in late summer, beaches within easy reach, protected countryside behind the coast, and a centre where the notable places sit close together on foot.
Choose Siena if you are coming for museums and old streets: roughly twice Monaco's museum count, more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and a compact historic core you can work through in a couple of days.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Monaco leads by 73 points.73
| Monaco | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 73 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 4 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 50 | 0 |
| Coast distance | 0 km | 64 km |
| Water distance | 0 km | — |
Places to eat. Monaco leads by 7 points.7
| Monaco | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 39 | 32 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 269 | 242 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 16 | 11 |
Museums & heritage. Siena leads by 33 points.33
| Monaco | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 38 | 71 |
| Museums within 10 km | 23 | 55 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 8 | 51 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 35 | 93 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 2 | 5 |
Nightlife. Siena leads by 9 points.9
| Monaco | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 8 | 17 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 69 | 142 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 63 | 119 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 91 | 84 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 7 | 1 |
Nature & day trips. Monaco leads by 34 points.34
| Monaco | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 53 | 19 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 24 | 3 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 17 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 54 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 15 hectares | 29 hectares |
Good for families. Monaco leads by 4 points.4
| Monaco | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 35 | 31 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 14 | 13 |
| Park area within 2 km | 15 hectares | 29 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 3 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Monaco leads by 14 points.14
| Monaco | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 64 | 50 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 154 | 69 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Year-round weather. Monaco leads by 10 points.10
| Monaco | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 74 | 64 |
| Monthly daytime high | 13.3 °C to 27.9 °C | 8.9 °C to 31.3 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 13 mm to 138 mm | 49 mm to 136 mm |
| Dry months | 3 | 0 |
Where they differ
Monaco is the coastal option: 50 beaches within reach, and sea at 21°C or more for four months of the year, where Siena has no coast at all. The land around it is also far more protected, 24% against 3%, so countryside days and walks are easier to reach.
Siena is the heritage trip: about twice as many museums as Monaco, clustered tightly enough around the centre to see several on foot, and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Monaco's 2.
Where they are alike
Neither is built for families, and they land close together. Each has a similar number of tourist attractions near the centre; Monaco adds 3 theme parks within reach, Siena about twice the park space close in.
Eating and drinking are close too. Restaurant numbers near the centre are similar, though Monaco covers a wider range of kitchens. Siena has more places to drink, Monaco many more nightclubs, and in both they sit near the centre.
Which traveller are you?
A traveller who wants to swim should take Monaco. It is the only one of the two with a coast, with 50 beaches within reach and sea at 21°C or more for four months. Siena offers no equivalent.
Someone touring museums and historic centres should take Siena. It has roughly twice Monaco's museum count, packed close enough to walk between, and more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.
Families face a closer call, since neither city stands out. Monaco brings beaches and 3 theme parks within reach; Siena brings more park space near the centre and a walkable core with no traffic to negotiate.
What the numbers don't tell you
No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset carries a daily budget for Siena, around €155, and none at all for Monaco, so nothing in these figures tells you how the two compare on price. Treat that axis as unmeasured for Monaco rather than good or bad.
The sunshine figure is missing for Siena, so that side of the weather comparison rests on temperature and rainfall alone. And Monaco's beach and nature figures count what lies within reach of a territory of 38,900 people, not what sits inside it, while its strongest months, July and August, are the ones everyone else picks.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Monaco: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (19.9 km from centre). Siena: 2006-2017 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Arezzo (45 km from centre).
Monaco's window is July and August: 28°C days, sea at 24-25°C, and its driest weeks, 13mm of rain at the peak. Autumn is the wet stretch, climbing above 120mm a month, though the cool half of the year stays mild rather than cold.
Siena is better either side of high summer, in June or September, when days sit at 26-28°C rather than the 31°C of the hottest weeks. September is wet, near 103mm, which makes June the safer pick.
Getting there
| Flying from | Monaco | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 30 m €78-111 NCE · 18 km | 1 h 40 m €143-159 FLR · 55 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 55 m €76-223 NCE · 18 km | 2 h 5 m €180-199 1 stop FLR · 55 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 50 m €170-248 NCE · 18 km | 1 h 55 m €232-255 2 stops FLR · 55 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 10 m €69-133 NCE · 18 km | 55 m €136-139 1 stop FLR · 55 km |
| TiranaTIA | 1 h 55 m no fares NCE · 18 km | 1 h 35 m no fares PSA · 86 km |
| MadridMAD | 1 h 50 m €137-165 NCE · 18 km | 2 h 10 m no fares FLR · 55 km |
| BucharestOTP, BBU | 2 h 25 m €120-160 NCE · 18 km | 2 h 10 m €104-116 PSA · 86 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 30 m €164-246 1 stop NCE · 18 km | 1 h 30 m no fares FLR · 55 km |
| ManchesterMAN | 2 h 10 m no fares NCE · 18 km | 2 h 20 m no fares PSA · 86 km |
| TunisTUN | 1 h 35 m €148-281 NCE · 18 km | 1 h 40 m no fares BLQ · 135 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
| Measure | Monaco | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | French | Italian |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CEF230 V, 50 Hz | CFL230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 68 m | 322 m |
| Main airport | Nice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)18 km from centre129 non-stop destinations | Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR)55 km from centre36 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 12 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Monaco | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 38,857 | 52,812 |
| People per km² | 18,503 | 446 |
| Museums within 10 km | 14 | 29 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 2 | 5 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 29 | 25 |
| 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 Monaco or Siena somewhere new.