VacationSelector

Athens or Barcelona?

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

Your match

Athens
68
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Barcelona
✓ Best match
71
match

Wins on places to eat and beaches & swimming 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.

AthensBarcelona
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 17 points.17
AthensBarcelona
Score4865
Swim season months53
Beaches 10 km1420
Coast distance6 km2 km
Water distance6 km2 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 21 points.21
AthensBarcelona
Score6990
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4313,786
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2541
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 5 points.5
AthensBarcelona
Score7368
Museums within 10 km122105
Museums within 2 km of centre7849
Share of museums within 2 km %6447
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 1 points.1
AthensBarcelona
Score8182
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7182,711
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,3541,641
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5061
Nightclubs within 4 km136245
Nature & day trips. Barcelona leads by 5 points.5
AthensBarcelona
Score4550
Protected land share 50 km %510
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5051
Park area within 2 km128 hectares49 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 6 points.6
AthensBarcelona
Score7165
Tourist attractions within 2 km6860
Park area within 2 km128 hectares49 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 2 points.2
AthensBarcelona
Score7573
Notable places within 2 km291258
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 3 points.3
AthensBarcelona
Score7471
Price level global55.860.8
Daily budget€125€122
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 4 points.4
AthensBarcelona
Score7478
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C13.9 °C to 28.9 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm27 mm to 83 mm
Dry months75
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
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Barcelona
14
14
16
19
22
26
28
29
26
22
18
15
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensBarcelona
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
MadridMAD
3 h 30 m
€156-172
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
3 h 15 m
€173-293
BCN · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
11 h 55 m
€459-799
2 stops
BCN · 13 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

MeasureAthensBarcelona
Official languageGreekSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m9 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensBarcelona
City population643,4521,731,649
People per km²16,49917,094
Museums within 10 km8895
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre82128
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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