Pisa or Turin?
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 nightlife and places to eat 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 the sea matters: four months warm enough to swim, a warmer year overall and a drier high summer.
Choose Turin if you are here for the city itself: far more restaurants and a much wider range of kitchens, many more bars and clubs, and roughly twice the museums, in a centre with more to walk between.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Pisa leads by 21 points.21
| Pisa | Turin | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 21 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 4 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 1 | 1 |
| Coast distance | 10 km | 105 km |
| Water distance | 10 km | — |
Places to eat. Turin leads by 30 points.30
| Pisa | Turin | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 34 | 64 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 379 | 1,198 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 9 | 21 |
Museums & heritage. Turin leads by 13 points.13
| Pisa | Turin | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 68 |
| Museums within 10 km | 27 | 65 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 22 | 39 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 81 | 60 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 3 | 4 |
Nightlife. Turin leads by 38 points.38
| Pisa | Turin | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 28 | 66 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 232 | 1,375 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 203 | 768 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 88 | 56 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 3 | 57 |
Nature & day trips. Pisa leads by 6 points.6
| Pisa | Turin | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 39 | 33 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 9 | 6 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 65 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 40 hectares | 72 hectares |
Good for families. Turin leads by 6 points.6
| Pisa | Turin | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 47 | 53 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 20 | 36 |
| Park area within 2 km | 40 hectares | 72 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 2 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Turin leads by 8 points.8
| Pisa | Turin | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 47 | 55 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 58 | 92 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Pisa and Turin are level on 68.
| Pisa | Turin | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 68 |
| Price level global | 64.9 | 64.9 |
| Daily budget | €155 | €155 |
Year-round weather. Pisa leads by 6 points.6
| Pisa | Turin | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 70 | 64 |
| Monthly daytime high | 11.4 °C to 30.3 °C | 7.1 °C to 28.5 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 32 mm to 132 mm | 44 mm to 127 mm |
| Dry months | 2 | 0 |
Where they differ
Pisa is the one with a swimming season: both have a single beach nearby, but only Pisa's sea warms enough to use, holding 23°C into September and still 20°C in October. Turin has no coast.
Turin is the city for eating and going out: many more restaurants near the centre, covering a far wider range of cooking, and a much larger choice of bars and clubs, about half of them central.
Where they are alike
Neither is a base for time in the countryside. Protected land accounts for 9% of the area around Pisa and 6% around Turin, with a similar handful of UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.
The rest of the picture is close too. Both are compact enough to cover the main sights on foot, both give families attractions and park space near the centre, and both follow the same year: coolest in January, hottest at 29-30°C in high summer.
Which traveller are you?
If swimming is part of the trip, Pisa is the only option here: sea at 22-25°C from June to August and warm days into September. Turin has no swimming season at all.
Anyone travelling to eat and go out should take Turin: roughly three times the restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, and many more bars and clubs, about half of them central.
Families can go either way. Turin has about twice the attractions and park space within walking distance of the centre; Pisa answers with 2 theme parks in reach and a beach, which suits a summer trip.
What the numbers don't tell you
The value figures are identical for these two by construction: they reflect a national price level rather than either city, so the value comparison here carries no information about which trip costs less. The €155 daily budget beside it is one national estimate, not a measurement of Pisa or Turin, and it will not tell you how far your money goes in either.
No weather station near Turin records sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low, and Turin's monthly ranking rests on temperature and rainfall alone. That side of the weather comparison is simply unmeasured.
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. Pisa: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (3.9 km from centre). Turin: 1991-2020 normals, Torino / Caselle (15.4 km from centre).
Pisa suits May to September, and high summer stays dry there, 32-35mm, with days at 30°C and the sea at its warmest for swimming. Spring is workable too, though wetter. From October the rain sets in and stays through November.
Turin is at its best in July, near 29°C and among its drier months at 57mm. May and September both pass 100mm, so aim for the middle of summer rather than the shoulder seasons; late autumn is wet in both cities.
Getting there
| Flying from | Pisa | Turin |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 5 m €48-62 PSA · 4 km | 1 h 45 m no fares TRN · 14 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 55 m €136-139 1 stop FLR · 65 km | 1 h 15 m no fares TRN · 14 km |
| CataniaCTA | 1 h 35 m €55-66 PSA · 4 km | 1 h 55 m €41-129 TRN · 14 km |
| TiranaTIA | 1 h 35 m no fares PSA · 4 km | 1 h 55 m no fares TRN · 14 km |
| PalermoPMO | 1 h 25 m no fares PSA · 4 km | 1 h 45 m no fares TRN · 14 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 40 m no fares PSA · 4 km | 1 h 20 m no fares TRN · 14 km |
| BariBRI | 1 h 20 m no fares PSA · 4 km | 1 h 40 m no fares TRN · 14 km |
| CagliariCAG | 1 h 15 m no fares PSA · 4 km | 1 h 25 m no fares TRN · 14 km |
| BrindisiBDS | 1 h 30 m no fares PSA · 4 km | 1 h 50 m no fares TRN · 14 km |
| MarrakechRAK | 3 h 10 m no fares PSA · 4 km | 3 h 5 m no fares TRN · 14 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
| Measure | Pisa | Turin |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | 4 m | 239 m |
| Main airport | Pisa International Airport (PSA)4 km from centre81 non-stop destinations | Turin Airport (TRN)14 km from centre63 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Pisa | Turin |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 88,737 | 841,600 |
| People per km² | 479 | 6,474 |
| Museums within 10 km | 27 | 72 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 3 | 4 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 29 | 78 |
| 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 Pisa or Turin somewhere new.