Palermo or Pisa?
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 nightlife with your weighting.
Wins on good for families and museums & heritage 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 Palermo if the trip is built around swimming, eating out and going out: the sea is 1km from the centre and the range of restaurants, bars and clubs is much wider.
Choose Pisa if you want a smaller, quieter city with heritage attached, 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach and 2 theme parks for children.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 46 points.46
| Palermo | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 67 | 21 |
| Swim season months | 5 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 13 | 1 |
| Coast distance | 1 km | 10 km |
| Water distance | 1 km | 10 km |
Places to eat. Palermo leads by 16 points.16
| Palermo | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 50 | 34 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 807 | 379 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 13 | 9 |
Museums & heritage. Pisa leads by 5 points.5
| Palermo | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 50 | 55 |
| Museums within 10 km | 32 | 27 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 26 | 22 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 81 | 81 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 1 | 3 |
Nightlife. Palermo leads by 25 points.25
| Palermo | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 53 | 28 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 799 | 232 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 515 | 203 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 64 | 88 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 16 | 3 |
Nature & day trips. Pisa leads by 3 points.3
| Palermo | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 36 | 39 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 4 | 9 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 45 | 65 |
| Park area within 2 km | 63 hectares | 40 hectares |
Good for families. Pisa leads by 6 points.6
| Palermo | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 41 | 47 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 16 | 20 |
| Park area within 2 km | 63 hectares | 40 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 2 |
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 10 points.10
| Palermo | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 57 | 47 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 104 | 58 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Palermo and Pisa are level on 68.
| Palermo | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 68 |
| Price level global | 64.9 | 64.9 |
| Daily budget | €155 | €155 |
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 7 points.7
| Palermo | Pisa | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 77 | 70 |
| Monthly daytime high | 12.6 °C to 27.8 °C | 11.4 °C to 30.3 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 4 mm to 71 mm | 32 mm to 132 mm |
| Dry months | 7 | 2 |
Where they differ
Palermo puts the sea 1km from its centre against 10km at Pisa, with 13 beaches nearby where Pisa has one. It also has about twice as many restaurants near the centre, three times as many places to drink, far more nightclubs, and about twice as many notable places within walking distance.
Pisa has somewhat more tourist attractions near the centre, 2 theme parks where Palermo has none, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach. Its summers run hotter, reaching 30°C.
Where they are alike
Day trips are a limited draw from either. Protected land covers 9% of the area around Pisa and 4% around Palermo, so neither is a base for wild country, though Palermo has about twice as much park space near the centre.
Beyond that, both hold a broadly comparable stock of museums, and both work with children, Pisa through attractions near the centre, Palermo through parks. Winters are mild in both, with January highs of 11-13°C.
Which traveller are you?
A traveller whose day ends in the water should take Palermo. The sea sits 1km from the centre, 13 beaches are within reach, and five months hold sea temperatures of 21°C or more.
Families lean towards Pisa, with somewhat more tourist attractions near the centre and 2 theme parks within reach, against none at Palermo. Palermo answers with more park space and much easier swimming.
Anyone travelling to eat and to stay out late should choose Palermo: roughly twice the restaurants near the centre, three times the drinking places, many more nightclubs, and most of them close to the middle.
What the numbers don't tell you
The value comparison between these two carries no information. It is a national price level, identical for both by construction, and the €155 daily budget sitting beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either city. Judge cost on your own accommodation and flights instead.
Palermo's swimming advantage peaks when the crowds do, in the warmest weeks of summer, and the same weeks carry the highest prices. Pisa's hotter summer, at 30°C, is heat rather than comfort. Palermo's dryness is a summer trait only: its late autumn months pass 67mm.
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. Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre). Pisa: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (3.9 km from centre).
Palermo's window runs June to September, with highs of 24-28°C, sea at 22-27°C and almost no rain, 4mm at the height of summer. October still swims, at 23°C, though the rain returns.
Pisa is the better pick in late spring, when highs reach 23-27°C and rainfall stays under 65mm, and it is hotter in midsummer at 30°C. From September its autumn turns heavily wet, over 100mm a month, while Palermo stays drier well into the autumn.
Getting there
| Flying from | Palermo | Pisa |
|---|---|---|
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 10 m €40-52 PMO · 25 km | 55 m €136-139 1 stop FLR · 65 km |
| MilanMXP, BGY, LIN | 1 h 45 m €31-110 PMO · 25 km | 1 h 5 m no fares EBA · 107 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 50 m no fares PMO · 25 km | 2 h 5 m €48-62 PSA · 4 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 2 h 25 m €101-135 PMO · 25 km | 1 h 40 m no fares PSA · 4 km |
| NaplesNAP | 1 h 0 m €42-84 PMO · 25 km | 1 h 20 m no fares GOA · 147 km |
| CagliariCAG | 1 h 5 m no fares PMO · 25 km | 1 h 15 m no fares PSA · 4 km |
| BrusselsBRU, CRL | 2 h 30 m €106-165 1 stop PMO · 25 km | 1 h 45 m no fares PSA · 4 km |
| BariBRI | 1 h 10 m no fares PMO · 25 km | 1 h 20 m no fares PSA · 4 km |
| BerlinBER | 2 h 30 m €135-181 1 stop PMO · 25 km | 1 h 50 m €119-200 1 stop PSA · 4 km |
| Tel Aviv YafoTLV | 3 h 10 m €151-346 1 stop PMO · 25 km | 3 h 35 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
| Measure | Palermo | Pisa |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Italian | Italian |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CFL230 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 | 14 m | 4 m |
| Main airport | Falcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations | Pisa International Airport (PSA)4 km from centre81 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Palermo | Pisa |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 630,167 | 88,737 |
| People per km² | 3,924 | 479 |
| Museums within 10 km | 42 | 27 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 1 | 3 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 33 | 29 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 5 months | 4 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Palermo or Pisa somewhere new.