VacationSelector

Pisa or Zadar?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Pisa
45
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Zadar
47
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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 your days are built around museums, heritage and a centre you can cross on foot: it has far more notable places within walking distance than Zadar, and more to keep children occupied.

Choose Zadar if swimming is the point of the trip: the sea is at the edge of the centre rather than 10km away, with 49 beaches nearby against Pisa's one.

Scoreboard

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

PisaZadar
Beaches & swimming. Zadar leads by 52 points.52
PisaZadar
Score2173
Swim season months44
Beaches 10 km149
Coast distance10 km0 km
Water distance10 km0 km
Places to eat. Pisa leads by 9 points.9
PisaZadar
Score3425
Restaurants within 2 km of centre379143
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km911
Museums & heritage. Pisa leads by 22 points.22
PisaZadar
Score5533
Museums within 10 km278
Museums within 2 km of centre228
Share of museums within 2 km %81100
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Pisa leads by 3 points.3
PisaZadar
Score2825
Drinking venues within 4 km232194
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre203139
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8872
Nightclubs within 4 km34
Nature & day trips. Zadar leads by 16 points.16
PisaZadar
Score3955
Protected land share 50 km %912
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6547
Park area within 2 km40 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Pisa leads by 16 points.16
PisaZadar
Score4731
Tourist attractions within 2 km209
Park area within 2 km40 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Pisa leads by 16 points.16
PisaZadar
Score4731
Notable places within 2 km5823
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zadar leads by 12 points.12
PisaZadar
Score6880
Price level global64.948.5
Daily budget€155€138
Year-round weather. Pisa leads by 1 points.1
PisaZadar
Score7069
Monthly daytime high11.4 °C to 30.3 °C10.4 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 132 mm25 mm to 117 mm
Dry months22
0255075100

Where they differ

Pisa is the stronger city for indoor culture: about three times as many museums as Zadar, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Zadar's 2. Its centre is denser too, with roughly three times as many notable places within walking distance and about twice as many tourist attractions near the middle.

Zadar's advantage is water and open country. The sea is 0km from its centre against 10km in Pisa, there are 49 beaches nearby against Pisa's 1, and a larger share of the surrounding land is protected.

Where they are alike

Weather is where the two are hardest to separate: both run daytime highs of about 11-30°C across the year, and both get two months with 40mm of rain or less.

Neither is a night-out city. Pisa has somewhat more places to drink, Zadar somewhat more nightclubs, and in both they sit near the centre. Eating out is modest in scale on both sides, Pisa with more restaurants near the centre, Zadar with a wider range of kitchens.

Which traveller are you?

Families with young children will find more to fill a day in Pisa: about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre, more park space, and 2 theme parks within reach against Zadar's 1. The sea, though, is 10km out.

Anyone travelling to swim should go to Zadar. The sea starts at the centre, 49 beaches lie within reach, and four months hold the water at 21°C or more.

A traveller with a few days and no car is better served by Pisa, where the museums are far more numerous and the notable places sit close enough together to work on foot. Zadar suits walking of a different kind, with more protected land around it.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €155 and €138, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of either city. A heavily visited city can sit well above its own country's average, by more than the gap between those two numbers, so neither figure tells you what a trip here will cost.

Sunshine hours are not recorded near Zadar, so that side of the weather comparison is unmeasured and its monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. Zadar's beach advantage also only pays off in the four months the sea reaches 21°C or more, which are the months its coast is busiest.

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
Zadar
10
11
15
19
23
28
31
31
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Pisa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Zadar
14
13
13
14
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Pisa
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Zadar
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Daylight, hours per day
Pisa
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zadar
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Pisa
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3
Zadar
No sunshine record

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). Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Pisa is at its best in high summer, June to August, with highs of 27-30°C, its driest weeks of the year and the sea at 25°C by August. Autumn turns wet quickly there, and by October rain reaches 125mm.

Zadar carries the shoulder months better. May and September are as good there as midsummer: September still reaches 26°C with the sea at 23°C, and noticeably less rain than Pisa in the same month.

Getting there

Flying fromPisaZadar
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 4 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
RomeFCO, CIA
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 65 km
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 107 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 107 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 55 m
€210-262
1 stop
PSA · 4 km
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 20 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 50 m
€120-185
1 stop
PSA · 4 km
2 h 45 m
€123-165
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
DublinDUB
2 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 45 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
MunichMUC
1 h 15 m
no fares
FLR · 65 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
BerlinBER
1 h 50 m
€119-200
1 stop
PSA · 4 km
1 h 45 m
€156-284
ZAD · 10 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

MeasurePisaZadar
Official languageItalianCroatian
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 m5 m
Main airportPisa International Airport (PSA)4 km from centre81 non-stop destinationsZadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasurePisaZadar
City population88,73770,779
People per km²479–
Museums within 10 km271
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre2917
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Pisa or Zadar 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.