Venice or Vienna?
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
Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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 Venice if you want a compact centre where the notable sights sit within walking distance, and a sea warm enough to swim in for four months of the year.
Choose Vienna if you want the wider choice of restaurants and kitchens, far more places to drink after dark, and parks near the centre. Its summers top out near 27°C.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Venice leads by 69 points.69
| Venice | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 69 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 4 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 20 | 22 |
| Coast distance | 4 km | 10,000 km |
| Water distance | 4 km | — |
Places to eat. Vienna leads by 32 points.32
| Venice | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 45 | 77 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 750 | 1,617 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 10 | 37 |
Museums & heritage. Vienna leads by 9 points.9
| Venice | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72 | 81 |
| Museums within 10 km | 57 | 192 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 45 | 110 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 79 | 57 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 5 | 3 |
Nightlife. Vienna leads by 39 points.39
| Venice | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 35 | 74 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 342 | 1,948 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 306 | 1,089 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 89 | 56 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 3 | 108 |
Nature & day trips. Vienna leads by 15 points.15
| Venice | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 17 | 32 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 4 | 4 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 70 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 15 hectares | 93 hectares |
Good for families. Vienna leads by 12 points.12
| Venice | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 57 | 69 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 72 | 46 |
| Park area within 2 km | 15 hectares | 93 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 3 | 4 |
Sights concentration. Venice leads by 8 points.8
| Venice | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 83 | 75 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 464 | 287 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Venice leads by 9 points.9
| Venice | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 59 |
| Price level global | 64.9 | 76.9 |
| Daily budget | €155 | €160 |
Year-round weather. Venice leads by 5 points.5
| Venice | Vienna | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 66 | 61 |
| Monthly daytime high | 8 °C to 30.4 °C | 3.3 °C to 26.8 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 36 mm to 106 mm | 38 mm to 80 mm |
| Dry months | 2 | 1 |
Where they differ
Venice is the one with swimming: four months of sea at 21°C or more, rising to 26°C in August, where Vienna has no sea season at all. Its notable places also cluster tightly, about twice as many within walking distance of the centre.
Vienna has roughly twice as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens. It also has many times as many bars and clubs, though only about half of them sit near the centre.
Where they are alike
Weather is where they run closest. Both are cold in winter and warm in high summer, Venice 8-30°C across the year and Vienna 3-27°C, and both get a little over 2,000 hours of sun.
Both also put their heritage within reach on foot: dense, walkable centres and a good stock of museums, with UNESCO-listed places within day-trip range, 5 from Venice and 3 from Vienna. The national daily budget estimates behind them are close too.
Which traveller are you?
Swimmers should go to Venice. Four months of sea at 21°C or more, peaking at 26°C, and Vienna has none of that despite a comparable number of beaches listed nearby.
Anyone travelling for meals and evenings out should pick Vienna: about twice as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and nightclubs.
Families are a split. Vienna has far more park space near the centre and 4 theme parks against Venice's 3; Venice packs its attractions tightly into walking distance, which suits shorter legs.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €155 and €160, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of either city. Neither can tell you how far a heavily visited city sits from its own country average, and that gap can be larger than the difference between the two countries.
Venice's swimming advantage is seasonal: the sea only passes 21°C in high summer, the same months the rest of the data favours. Vienna is credited with beaches nearby, but with no sea temperature behind them. With 4% of the land around both protected, neither is a base for wild country.
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. Venice: 1991-2020 normals, Treviso / S. Angelo (26.1 km from centre). Vienna: 1991-2020 normals, Wien / Hohe Warte (4.7 km from centre).
Venice is at its best in May and June, with highs of 24-28°C and the sea reaching 23°C, warmest of all in August at 26°C. Autumn is the catch: rainfall peaks at 106mm in early autumn, so the warm water comes with the wettest weather of the year.
Vienna suits high summer, when highs reach 25-27°C and rainfall runs close to Venice's. Its spring is the drier of the two: April brings 42mm against Venice's 78mm, which makes it the steadier choice outside the swimming season.
Getting there
| Flying from | Venice | Vienna |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 0 m €46-119 1 stop VCE · 7 km | 2 h 10 m €105-189 1 stop VIE · 18 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 40 m €68-109 VCE · 7 km | 1 h 55 m €112-162 VIE · 18 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 1 h 45 m €41-56 VCE · 7 km | 2 h 15 m €117-169 VIE · 18 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 20 m €136-186 1 stop VCE · 7 km | 1 h 25 m €143-152 VIE · 18 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 45 m €190-215 1 stop VCE · 7 km | 1 h 50 m €180-245 1 stop VIE · 18 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 20 m €148-150 VCE · 7 km | 2 h 5 m €121-285 VIE · 18 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 5 h 55 m €366-421 2 stops VCE · 7 km | 5 h 40 m €292-307 VIE · 18 km |
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 8 h 30 m €637-650 VCE · 7 km | 8 h 40 m €736-786 1 stop VIE · 18 km |
| BeijingPEK, PKX | 9 h 55 m no fares VCE · 7 km | 9 h 25 m no fares VIE · 18 km |
| CancunCUN | 11 h 10 m no fares VRN · 113 km | 11 h 30 m no fares VIE · 18 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 | Venice | Vienna |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Italian | German, Austrian Sign Language |
| 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 | 2 m | 151 m |
| Main airport | Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE)7 km from centre98 non-stop destinations | Vienna International Airport (VIE)18 km from centre204 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 16 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Venice | Vienna |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 250,369 | 2,028,289 |
| People per km² | 602 | 4,890 |
| Museums within 10 km | 52 | 152 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 5 | 3 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 46 | 113 |
| 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 Venice or Vienna somewhere new.