VacationSelector

Rome or Zurich?

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

Your match

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on good for families and sights concentration with your weighting.

Zurich
44
match

Wins on 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.

Scoreboard

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

RomeZurich
Beaches & swimming. Rome leads by 33 points.33
RomeZurich
Score330
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km323
Coast distance24 km632 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Zurich leads by 7 points.7
RomeZurich
Score6067
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,241974
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1030
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 28 points.28
RomeZurich
Score8456
Museums within 10 km16176
Museums within 2 km of centre7937
Share of museums within 2 km %4949
Unesco sites within 50 km71
Nightlife. Rome leads by 20 points.20
RomeZurich
Score7454
Drinking venues within 4 km2,022676
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre912553
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4582
Nightclubs within 4 km8574
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 33 points.33
RomeZurich
Score7037
Protected land share 50 km %1916
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %78100
Park area within 2 km172 hectares48 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 50 points.50
RomeZurich
Score8636
Tourist attractions within 2 km1268
Park area within 2 km172 hectares48 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 40 points.40
RomeZurich
Score9959
Notable places within 2 km1,125119
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rome leads by 33 points.33
RomeZurich
Score6835
Price level global64.9110.5
Daily budget€155€248
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 18 points.18
RomeZurich
Score7153
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 31.4 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall21 mm to 114 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months30
0255075100

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
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Zurich
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Zurich
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Zurich
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Rome
10
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
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
4
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. Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre). Zurich: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRomeZurich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 15 m
€136-291
FCO · 23 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€176-218
FCO · 23 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 9 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 45 m
€270-340
FCO · 23 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 9 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
11 h 45 m
€893-1016
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 9 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 5 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
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 2026-08 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

MeasureRomeZurich
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
Elevation21 m408 m
Main airportRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)9 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureRomeZurich
City population2,748,109452,421
People per km²2,1355,147
Museums within 10 km17763
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km71
Distinct cuisines in the centre6578
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Rome 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.