VacationSelector

Alicante or Rome?

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

Your match

Alicante
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on sights concentration and good for families 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.

AlicanteRome
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 44 points.44
AlicanteRome
Score7733
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km333
Coast distance1 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. Alicante leads by 6 points.6
AlicanteRome
Score6660
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8672,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3110
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 42 points.42
AlicanteRome
Score4284
Museums within 10 km14161
Museums within 2 km of centre1179
Share of museums within 2 km %7949
Unesco sites within 50 km27
Nightlife. Rome leads by 23 points.23
AlicanteRome
Score5174
Drinking venues within 4 km5912,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8345
Nightclubs within 4 km5485
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 30 points.30
AlicanteRome
Score4070
Protected land share 50 km %719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5978
Park area within 2 km60 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 44 points.44
AlicanteRome
Score4286
Tourist attractions within 2 km13126
Park area within 2 km60 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 73 points.73
AlicanteRome
Score2699
Notable places within 2 km181,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante leads by 3 points.3
AlicanteRome
Score7168
Price level global60.864.9
Daily budget€122€155
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 16 points.16
AlicanteRome
Score8771
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm21 mm to 114 mm
Dry months113
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
Alicante
17
18
20
22
24
28
30
31
29
25
21
18
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteRome
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€72-86
ALC · 10 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 5 m
€94-137
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
2 h 10 m
€176-218
FCO · 23 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
CIA · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 0 m
€62-83
ALC · 10 km
1 h 15 m
€84-118
FCO · 23 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
CIA · 14 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
FCO · 23 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

MeasureAlicanteRome
Official languageSpanishItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m21 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteRome
City population366,2212,748,109
People per km²1,8192,135
Museums within 10 km8177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km27
Distinct cuisines in the centre5265
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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