VacationSelector

Pisa or Zurich?

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, 1 point apart

Pisa
45
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Zurich
44
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 you want warmth and water: it runs warmer through the year, with a long season of sea above 21°C and its heritage packed tightly around the centre.

Choose Zurich if the trip is about eating and evenings out: far more restaurants, bars and clubs near the centre, more museums, and more protected land around the city for days away from it.

Scoreboard

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

PisaZurich
Beaches & swimming. Pisa leads by 21 points.21
PisaZurich
Score210
Swim season months40
Beaches 10 km123
Coast distance10 km632 km
Water distance10 km—
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 33 points.33
PisaZurich
Score3467
Restaurants within 2 km of centre379974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km930
Museums & heritage. Zurich leads by 1 points.1
PisaZurich
Score5556
Museums within 10 km2776
Museums within 2 km of centre2237
Share of museums within 2 km %8149
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Zurich leads by 26 points.26
PisaZurich
Score2854
Drinking venues within 4 km232676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre203553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8882
Nightclubs within 4 km374
Nature & day trips. Pisa leads by 2 points.2
PisaZurich
Score3937
Protected land share 50 km %916
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %65100
Park area within 2 km40 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Pisa leads by 11 points.11
PisaZurich
Score4736
Tourist attractions within 2 km208
Park area within 2 km40 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km22
Sights concentration. Zurich leads by 12 points.12
PisaZurich
Score4759
Notable places within 2 km58119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Pisa leads by 33 points.33
PisaZurich
Score6835
Price level global64.9110.5
Daily budget€155€248
Year-round weather. Pisa leads by 17 points.17
PisaZurich
Score7053
Monthly daytime high11.4 °C to 30.3 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 132 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months20
0255075100

Where they differ

Pisa runs warmer all year, highs of 11-30°C against Zurich's 4-24°C, and its midsummer is dry where Zurich's is not. Four months of sea at 21°C or more make swimming part of the trip, and it has about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre.

Zurich answers with eating and evenings: about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, three times as many places to drink, many more clubs, and twice as many notable places within walking distance.

Where they are alike

Museums and heritage is where they land closest. Zurich has the larger number of museums; Pisa keeps its tightly around the centre and has 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Zurich's 1.

They are also close on days out and family travel. Protected land is 16% around Zurich against 9% around Pisa, both have 2 theme parks within reach, and Zurich's parks near the centre offset Pisa's denser cluster of attractions.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone whose trip revolves around swimming should take Pisa: months of sea at 21°C or more and a midsummer reaching 30°C, against a Zurich summer that peaks at 24°C with no warm-water season at all.

A weekend built around restaurants and late evenings points to Zurich: roughly three times as many places to eat and to drink near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, and more notable places within walking distance.

Families lean to Pisa for the warmth and about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre; Zurich answers with more park space, and both have 2 theme parks within reach.

What the numbers don't tell you

Zurich has 23 beaches nearby against Pisa's 1, and that count says nothing about water temperature: there is no month when Zurich's water is warm enough to count as a swimming season, while Pisa's single stretch of coast has a long one. Equally, Pisa's dry midsummer is not the whole year: autumn is the wettest part of it.

The daily budget figures, €155 for Italy and €248 for Switzerland, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel prices, not measurements of either city. A capital or heavily visited city can sit far from its country's average, by more than the gap between these two, so price real hotels and meals.

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
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Pisa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Pisa
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Pisa
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zurich
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
Zurich
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

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). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Pisa is the better pick through spring and summer; its midsummer is the hottest and driest stretch of the year, at 30°C and under 40mm, and the sea holds above 21°C into early autumn. October and November are its wettest months, above 120mm each.

Zurich's window is narrower and wetter. July and August bring highs of 24°C but are among its wettest months, near 120mm, so build in indoor time; early autumn is calmer and drier, and winter days stay cold.

Getting there

Flying fromPisaZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 4 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
BSL · 81 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 65 km
1 h 30 m
€70-92
ZRH · 9 km
BerlinBER
1 h 50 m
€119-200
1 stop
PSA · 4 km
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 55 m
€210-262
1 stop
PSA · 4 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 25 m
no fares
PSA · 4 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€88-193
PSA · 4 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 35 m
€55-66
PSA · 4 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
BSL · 81 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 115 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 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

MeasurePisaZurich
Official languageItalianFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation4 m408 m
Main airportPisa International Airport (PSA)4 km from centre81 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasurePisaZurich
City population88,737452,421
People per km²4795,147
Museums within 10 km2763
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre2978
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 Zurich 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.