VacationSelector

Pisa or Salzburg?

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

Your match

Pisa
✓ Best match
45
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Salzburg
42
match

Wins on places to eat 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 Pisa if warmth and swimming decide it: midsummer highs of 30°C, a sea warm enough to swim in for four months, and dry summers.

Choose Salzburg if you would rather eat and look at things than swim: a much wider range of kitchens, about twice as many museums and many more nightclubs, in a city whose summer tops out near 25°C.

Scoreboard

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

PisaSalzburg
Beaches & swimming. Pisa leads by 21 points.21
PisaSalzburg
Score210
Swim season months40
Beaches 10 km19
Coast distance10 km653 km
Water distance10 km—
Places to eat. Salzburg leads by 15 points.15
PisaSalzburg
Score3449
Restaurants within 2 km of centre379348
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km923
Museums & heritage. Salzburg leads by 5 points.5
PisaSalzburg
Score5560
Museums within 10 km2742
Museums within 2 km of centre2227
Share of museums within 2 km %8164
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Salzburg leads by 8 points.8
PisaSalzburg
Score2836
Drinking venues within 4 km232294
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre203241
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8882
Nightclubs within 4 km316
Nature & day trips. Pisa leads by 12 points.12
PisaSalzburg
Score3927
Protected land share 50 km %96
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %65100
Park area within 2 km40 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Salzburg leads by 1 points.1
PisaSalzburg
Score4748
Tourist attractions within 2 km2017
Park area within 2 km40 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Pisa leads by 1 points.1
PisaSalzburg
Score4746
Notable places within 2 km5854
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Pisa leads by 9 points.9
PisaSalzburg
Score6859
Price level global64.976.9
Daily budget€155€160
Year-round weather. Pisa leads by 16 points.16
PisaSalzburg
Score7054
Monthly daytime high11.4 °C to 30.3 °C3.4 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 132 mm47 mm to 168 mm
Dry months20
0255075100

Where they differ

Pisa is warmer all year, with daytime highs of 11-30°C against Salzburg's 3-25°C, and it has the swimming: the sea holds 21°C or more for four months, which Salzburg's water never reaches. More of the surrounding land is protected, too, and there are slightly more attractions near the centre.

Salzburg's restaurants cover a much wider range of kitchens, though the two have similar numbers of them near the centre. It has about twice as many museums, many more nightclubs, most of them central, and 4 theme parks within reach against Pisa's 2.

Where they are alike

The two centres are equally walkable: each has about the same number of notable places within walking distance, so a stay in either can be spent largely on foot.

For families they land in much the same place. Park space near the centre is comparable, Pisa has somewhat more attractions in the middle, Salzburg 4 theme parks within reach against 2. Both also sit within day-trip reach of 3 UNESCO-listed places.

Which traveller are you?

If you want to swim, Pisa is the only real option of the two: the sea holds 21°C or more for four months. Salzburg has more beaches nearby, but none of them warm enough for that.

Museum days and long dinners point to Salzburg: about twice as many museums, a far wider range of kitchens, and many more nightclubs, most of them close enough to the centre to walk between.

Families can pick either. Both centres are compact and similar on park space; Salzburg has 4 theme parks within reach against Pisa's 2, while Pisa adds more attractions in the middle and a swimmable sea.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €155 and €160, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels in Italy and Austria, not measurements of Pisa or Salzburg. A heavily visited city can sit far above its own country's average, by more than the gap between these two, so the near-identical figures say nothing about which trip will cost more.

Beach counts mislead here: Salzburg has 9 beaches nearby but no month with water warm enough to swim in, while Pisa's single beach comes with a real season. Rain cuts the other way: Salzburg's warmest months are its wettest, and Pisa's dry midsummer ends in a very wet autumn.

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
Pisa
11
13
16
18
23
27
30
30
26
21
16
12
Salzburg
3
6
10
16
20
23
25
25
20
15
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Pisa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Salzburg
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Pisa
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Salzburg
62
47
83
80
142
168
159
167
127
90
70
67
Daylight, hours per day
Pisa
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Salzburg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Pisa
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3
Salzburg
3
3
5
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Pisa: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (3.9 km from centre). Salzburg: 1991-2020 normals, Salzburg (3.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Pisa suits May to September. July and August are its driest months at 32-35mm, with highs of 30°C and a sea at 25°C, so that is the swimming window. From September the rain builds quickly, past 125mm in October and November.

Salzburg is warmest in July and August at 25°C, but that is also its wettest stretch, above 155mm. April to June, at 16-23°C, is cooler and drier at the start, which suits walking days.

Getting there

Flying fromPisaSalzburg
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 4 km
1 h 55 m
€186-283
SZG · 3 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
1 h 30 m
€183-250
MUC · 112 km
RomeFCO, CIA
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 65 km
1 h 30 m
€141-202
MUC · 112 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€88-193
PSA · 4 km
2 h 25 m
€227-312
1 stop
MUC · 112 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€113-168
FLR · 65 km
1 h 55 m
€166-216
MUC · 112 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 45 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
AthensATH
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 115 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 25 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 10 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
MUC · 112 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 2026-09 to 2026-09, 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

MeasurePisaSalzburg
Official languageItalianGerman, Austrian Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation4 m424 m
Main airportPisa International Airport (PSA)4 km from centre81 non-stop destinationsSalzburg Airport (SZG)3 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasurePisaSalzburg
City population88,737155,021
People per km²4792,360
Museums within 10 km2738
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre2950
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Pisa or Salzburg 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.