VacationSelector

Athens or Ghent?

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 nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Ghent
50
match

Wins on 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.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AthensGhent
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 22 points.22
AthensGhent
Score4826
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km148
Coast distance6 km32 km
Water distance6 km32 km
Places to eat. Ghent leads by 1 points.1
AthensGhent
Score6970
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431764
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2549
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 15 points.15
AthensGhent
Score7358
Museums within 10 km12224
Museums within 2 km of centre7820
Share of museums within 2 km %6483
Unesco sites within 50 km25
Nightlife. Athens leads by 32 points.32
AthensGhent
Score8149
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718570
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354446
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5078
Nightclubs within 4 km13626
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 11 points.11
AthensGhent
Score4534
Protected land share 50 km %57
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %5087
Park area within 2 km128 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 21 points.21
AthensGhent
Score7150
Tourist attractions within 2 km6819
Park area within 2 km128 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 29 points.29
AthensGhent
Score7546
Notable places within 2 km29155
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 14 points.14
AthensGhent
Score7460
Price level global55.876.2
Daily budget€125€180
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 18 points.18
AthensGhent
Score7456
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C6.4 °C to 22 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm35 mm to 79 mm
Dry months71
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
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2

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). Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensGhent
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
MadridMAD
3 h 30 m
€156-172
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 55 m
€134-222
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
ThessalonikiSKG
1 h 0 m
€103-128
ATH · 20 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 56 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 30 m
€286-308
ATH · 20 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 35 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 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

MeasureAthensGhent
Official languageGreekFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m12 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensGhent
City population643,452272,657
People per km²16,4991,728
Museums within 10 km8830
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km25
Distinct cuisines in the centre8283
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Athens or Ghent 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.