Siena or Zadar?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration with your weighting.
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 Siena if the trip is about museums, old streets and day trips to listed towns: it concentrates far more into a walkable centre, and it rewards a late-spring visit.
Choose Zadar if you want to swim. Its 49 beaches and four months of sea at 21°C or more, plus far more protected land within reach, make it the coastal and outdoor option.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Zadar leads by 73 points.73
| Siena | Zadar | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 73 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 0 | 49 |
| Coast distance | 64 km | 0 km |
| Water distance | — | 0 km |
Places to eat. Siena leads by 7 points.7
| Siena | Zadar | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 32 | 25 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 242 | 143 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 11 | 11 |
Museums & heritage. Siena leads by 38 points.38
| Siena | Zadar | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 71 | 33 |
| Museums within 10 km | 55 | 8 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 51 | 8 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 93 | 100 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 5 | 2 |
Nightlife. Zadar leads by 8 points.8
| Siena | Zadar | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 17 | 25 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 142 | 194 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 119 | 139 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 84 | 72 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 1 | 4 |
Nature & day trips. Zadar leads by 36 points.36
| Siena | Zadar | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 19 | 55 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 3 | 12 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 47 |
| Park area within 2 km | 29 hectares | 30 hectares |
Good for families. Siena and Zadar are level on 31.
| Siena | Zadar | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 31 | 31 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 13 | 9 |
| Park area within 2 km | 29 hectares | 30 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 1 |
Sights concentration. Siena leads by 19 points.19
| Siena | Zadar | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 50 | 31 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 69 | 23 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Zadar leads by 12 points.12
| Siena | Zadar | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 80 |
| Price level global | 64.9 | 48.5 |
| Daily budget | €155 | €138 |
Year-round weather. Zadar leads by 5 points.5
| Siena | Zadar | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 64 | 69 |
| Monthly daytime high | 8.9 °C to 31.3 °C | 10.4 °C to 31 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 49 mm to 136 mm | 25 mm to 117 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 2 |
Where they differ
Siena is the heritage choice. It has many times as many museums as Zadar, 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Zadar's 2, and about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, so a day on foot covers more.
Zadar is the outdoor and coastal choice. It has 49 beaches nearby where Siena has none, 4 months with the sea at 21°C or more, and 12% of the land around it protected against 3% around Siena.
Where they are alike
Neither stands out for families, and they get there similarly: Siena has somewhat more tourist attractions near the centre, Zadar has 1 theme park within reach, and park space near the centre is much the same.
Their weather years track each other closely, with highs of 9-31°C in Siena and 10-31°C in Zadar. Eating out covers a similar range of kitchens in both, and neither is a nightlife town, though what exists sits near the centre.
Which traveller are you?
Someone travelling for museums and old towns should pick Siena: many times as many museums as Zadar, 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2, and a centre where the notable sights sit close together.
A swimmer or beach-first traveller should pick Zadar: 49 beaches nearby where Siena has none, and four months when the sea reaches 21°C or more. Its day trips also lean on protected coast and countryside.
Families face a near tie. Zadar adds a theme park and the swimming; Siena has somewhat more tourist attractions near the centre. Park space near the centre is much the same in both.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €155 for Italy and €138 for Croatia, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel prices, not measurements of either city. A heavily visited town can sit well above its own country average, so the small gap between them says nothing reliable about what either trip costs.
No weather station near these cities records sunshine hours, so that side of the comparison is unmeasured, and the monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea temperature alone. Note too that Zadar's driest, warmest months are the ones when its 49 beaches are 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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Siena: 2006-2017 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Arezzo (45 km from centre). Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre).
Siena is at its best in May and June, with highs of 23-28°C and 71-99mm of rain. September is just as warm but wetter, at 103mm, and the winter months are cool and damp.
Zadar's warm season is longer and drier at its peak. July and August are its driest months, at 25-32mm, with the sea at 24-25°C, so swimming holds up well into the autumn. November is its wettest month by a distance.
Getting there
| Flying from | Siena | Zadar |
|---|---|---|
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 40 m €143-159 FLR · 55 km | 2 h 5 m €169-225 SPU · 107 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 55 m €232-255 2 stops FLR · 55 km | 2 h 10 m €186-201 1 stop SPU · 107 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 55 m €136-139 1 stop FLR · 55 km | 1 h 5 m €294 SPU · 107 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 5 m €180-199 1 stop FLR · 55 km | 2 h 20 m no fares ZAD · 10 km |
| MunichMUC | 1 h 15 m no fares FLR · 55 km | 1 h 25 m no fares SPU · 107 km |
| ZurichZRH | 1 h 10 m no fares FLR · 55 km | 1 h 35 m €247-298 1 stop SPU · 107 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 30 m no fares FLR · 55 km | 1 h 40 m €161-226 1 stop ZAD · 10 km |
| ManchesterMAN | 2 h 20 m no fares PSA · 86 km | 2 h 45 m no fares SPU · 107 km |
| ViennaVIE | 1 h 25 m €185-255 1 stop FLR · 55 km | 1 h 10 m €45-192 ZAD · 10 km |
| DublinDUB | 2 h 35 m no fares PSA · 86 km | 3 h 0 m no fares SPU · 107 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
| Measure | Siena | Zadar |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Italian | Croatian |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CFL230 V, 50 Hz | CF230 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 | 322 m | 5 m |
| Main airport | Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR)55 km from centre36 non-stop destinations | Zadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 14 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Siena | Zadar |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 52,812 | 70,779 |
| People per km² | 446 | – |
| Museums within 10 km | 29 | 1 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 5 | 2 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 25 | 17 |
| 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 Siena or Zadar somewhere new.