VacationSelector

Athens or Catania?

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

Your match

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

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

Catania
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

AthensCatania
Beaches & swimming. Catania leads by 10 points.10
AthensCatania
Score4858
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km145
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 20 points.20
AthensCatania
Score6949
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431637
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2514
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 14 points.14
AthensCatania
Score7359
Museums within 10 km12234
Museums within 2 km of centre7827
Share of museums within 2 km %6479
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Athens leads by 34 points.34
AthensCatania
Score8147
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718537
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354403
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5075
Nightclubs within 4 km13618
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 14 points.14
AthensCatania
Score4531
Protected land share 50 km %510
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5061
Park area within 2 km128 hectares11 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 35 points.35
AthensCatania
Score7136
Tourist attractions within 2 km6825
Park area within 2 km128 hectares11 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 36 points.36
AthensCatania
Score7539
Notable places within 2 km29137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 6 points.6
AthensCatania
Score7468
Price level global55.864.9
Daily budget€125€155
Year-round weather. Catania leads by 3 points.3
AthensCatania
Score7477
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C15.8 °C to 34.5 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm9 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
Catania
16
16
19
21
26
31
34
35
30
26
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Catania
15
15
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Catania
65
45
42
32
18
11
9
9
49
51
71
83
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Catania
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Catania
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
7
6
5
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). Catania: 1991-2020 normals, Catania / Sigonella (18.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensCatania
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
1 h 55 m
€45-94
CTA · 4 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 20 m
€38-50
CTA · 4 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
3 h 0 m
€106-144
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
2 h 35 m
€91-153
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
2 h 10 m
€166-455
CTA · 4 km
HeraklionHER
1 h 0 m
€84-111
ATH · 20 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
BolognaBLQ
2 h 10 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€38-100
CTA · 4 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€214-254
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 5 m
€195-231
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
2 h 55 m
€157-299
CTA · 4 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
9 h 15 m
no fares
CTA · 4 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

MeasureAthensCatania
Official languageGreekItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m7 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsCatania-Fontanarossa Airport (CTA)4 km from centre95 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensCatania
City population643,452311,584
People per km²16,4991,704
Museums within 10 km8825
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre8230
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 Athens or Catania 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.