Palermo 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 nightlife with your weighting.
Wins on 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 you want to swim: 13 beaches nearby, a long warm stretch of sea, and many more places to eat and drink once the day ends.
Choose Siena if the point of the trip is museums and heritage. It holds about twice as many museums as Palermo and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, in a small town with little going on at night.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 67 points.67
| Palermo | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 67 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 5 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 13 | 0 |
| Coast distance | 1 km | 64 km |
| Water distance | 1 km | — |
Places to eat. Palermo leads by 18 points.18
| Palermo | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 50 | 32 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 807 | 242 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 13 | 11 |
Museums & heritage. Siena leads by 21 points.21
| Palermo | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 50 | 71 |
| Museums within 10 km | 32 | 55 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 26 | 51 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 81 | 93 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 1 | 5 |
Nightlife. Palermo leads by 36 points.36
| Palermo | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 53 | 17 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 799 | 142 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 515 | 119 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 64 | 84 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 16 | 1 |
Nature & day trips. Palermo leads by 17 points.17
| Palermo | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 36 | 19 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 4 | 3 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 45 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 63 hectares | 29 hectares |
Good for families. Palermo leads by 10 points.10
| Palermo | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 41 | 31 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 16 | 13 |
| Park area within 2 km | 63 hectares | 29 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 7 points.7
| Palermo | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 57 | 50 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 104 | 69 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Palermo and Siena are level on 68.
| Palermo | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 68 |
| Price level global | 64.9 | 64.9 |
| Daily budget | €155 | €155 |
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 13 points.13
| Palermo | Siena | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 77 | 64 |
| Monthly daytime high | 12.6 °C to 27.8 °C | 8.9 °C to 31.3 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 4 mm to 71 mm | 49 mm to 136 mm |
| Dry months | 7 | 0 |
Where they differ
Palermo has 13 beaches nearby and five months when the sea is 21°C or warmer, peaking at 27°C; Siena has no coast at all. It also has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs.
Siena is the stronger heritage stop, with about twice as many museums and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Palermo's 1, and summer days reaching 31°C.
Where they are alike
Both keep their interest in a small walkable core: in each, the notable places sit within walking distance of the centre, so a day of sightseeing needs no transport.
They also line up on family travel and on the shape of the year. Neither has a theme park within reach, both rely on parks and attractions near the centre, and both stay mild in winter, with January highs of 13°C in Palermo and 9°C in Siena.
Which traveller are you?
If swimming is the point of the holiday, Palermo is the only option here: 13 beaches nearby and sea reaching 27°C in late summer. Siena has no coast and no substitute for it.
If you travel for museums and old buildings, Siena has about twice as many museums as Palermo and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, which gives a small town several days of material.
Families will find more to work with in Palermo: more attractions near the centre, about twice as much park space, and beaches. Neither city has a theme park, so plans depend on walking and swimming.
What the numbers don't tell you
The value figure is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so it tells you nothing about which of these two costs less. The €155 daily budget beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of Palermo or Siena; treat it as a rough baseline, not a local price.
No weather station near Siena records sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low and its monthly picture rests on temperature and rainfall alone. Palermo's beach appeal also rests on a warm sea that lasts only about five months, so a spring trip gets little of what lifts it above Siena.
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). Siena: 2006-2017 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Arezzo (45 km from centre).
Palermo peaks from June to September, when rain falls to 4-11mm a month and the sea holds 26-27°C. Late autumn is its wet spell, near 70mm a month, though days stay mild.
Siena suits late spring and early autumn, with highs of 23-28°C in May and June and September a shade cooler. Midsummer reaches 31°C with no sea for relief, and rain stays heavy through much of the year, peaking at 136mm in November.
Getting there
| Flying from | Palermo | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 10 m €40-52 PMO · 25 km | 55 m €136-139 1 stop FLR · 55 km |
| MilanMXP, BGY, LIN | 1 h 45 m €31-110 PMO · 25 km | 1 h 5 m no fares EBA · 108 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 2 h 25 m €101-135 PMO · 25 km | 1 h 40 m €143-159 FLR · 55 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 50 m no fares PMO · 25 km | 2 h 5 m €180-199 1 stop FLR · 55 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 1 h 50 m €49-107 PMO · 25 km | 1 h 35 m €113-168 FLR · 55 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 2 h 40 m no fares PMO · 25 km | 1 h 55 m €232-255 2 stops FLR · 55 km |
| ZurichZRH | 1 h 55 m €161-283 1 stop PMO · 25 km | 1 h 10 m no fares FLR · 55 km |
| MunichMUC | 2 h 0 m €175-215 1 stop PMO · 25 km | 1 h 15 m no fares FLR · 55 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 2 h 15 m €101-154 1 stop PMO · 25 km | 1 h 30 m no fares FLR · 55 km |
| Tel Aviv YafoTLV | 3 h 10 m €151-346 1 stop PMO · 25 km | 3 h 35 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 | Palermo | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | 322 m |
| Main airport | Falcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations | Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR)55 km from centre36 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Palermo | Siena |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 630,167 | 52,812 |
| People per km² | 3,924 | 446 |
| Museums within 10 km | 42 | 29 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 1 | 5 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 33 | 25 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 5 months | – |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Palermo or Siena somewhere new.