VacationSelector

Athens or Izmir?

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 good for families and sights concentration with your weighting.

Izmir
53
match

Wins on value for money 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.

The verdict

Choose Athens if the trip is built around walking to things: museums, ancient sites and restaurants sit close together, and two UNESCO-listed places lie within day-trip reach.

Choose Izmir if you want the sea at the end of the street, 1km from the centre rather than 6km, and a night out concentrated in one walkable area rather than spread across the city.

Scoreboard

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

AthensIzmir
Beaches & swimming. Izmir leads by 7 points.7
AthensIzmir
Score4855
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km144
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 20 points.20
AthensIzmir
Score6949
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431770
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2512
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 30 points.30
AthensIzmir
Score7343
Museums within 10 km12247
Museums within 2 km of centre7827
Share of museums within 2 km %6457
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Athens leads by 19 points.19
AthensIzmir
Score8162
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7181,028
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354695
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5068
Nightclubs within 4 km13670
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 16 points.16
AthensIzmir
Score4529
Protected land share 50 km %54
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5084
Park area within 2 km128 hectares62 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 36 points.36
AthensIzmir
Score7135
Tourist attractions within 2 km686
Park area within 2 km128 hectares62 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 35 points.35
AthensIzmir
Score7540
Notable places within 2 km29139
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Izmir leads by 15 points.15
AthensIzmir
Score7489
Price level global55.835.2
Daily budget€125€100
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 2 points.2
AthensIzmir
Score7472
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C13 °C to 33.9 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm1 mm to 127 mm
Dry months75
0255075100

Where they differ

Athens has many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and far more tourist attractions near it for families. It has about three times as many museums as Izmir, two UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Izmir has none, and more restaurants across a wider range of kitchens.

Izmir has 2 theme parks within reach against Athens's 1, its sea is closer to the centre, and its bars and clubs, though fewer, sit mostly near the centre, so an evening involves less crossing the city.

Where they are alike

Both run daytime highs of about 13-35°C across the year, with January the coolest month in each and a similar amount of annual sunshine. Neither has a genuinely cold season.

Both offer five months with the sea at 21°C or more, so the swimming window is the same length in each. Neither is a base for wild country: the protected share of land around them is similar and small, and park space near the centre is limited in both.

Which traveller are you?

For a museum-and-ruins trip, Athens: about three times as many museums as Izmir, tightly grouped around the centre, plus two UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, so a week can be done largely on foot.

Families are better served in Athens, with far more attractions near the centre and more park space, though Izmir counters with 2 theme parks within reach against Athens's 1.

For a swimming-led, low-effort trip, Izmir: the sea is 1km from the centre rather than 6km, and its bars and clubs are concentrated where you are staying rather than scattered.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €125 for Greece and €100 for Turkey, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of Athens or Izmir. A capital and a large, heavily visited city can each sit far from their own country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so this does not settle which trip costs more.

Beach strength reads differently: Athens has more beaches nearby, but they sit 6km out from the centre. And the warmest months, 34-35°C in July and August, are also the peak sea months, so the best swimming coincides with the heaviest heat and the busiest season.

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
Izmir
13
14
17
21
27
31
34
34
29
24
19
14
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Izmir
16
16
16
17
19
22
23
24
23
21
19
17
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Izmir
119
107
77
51
33
13
1
4
22
55
96
127
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Izmir
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
Izmir
5
5
7
8
10
11
13
12
10
8
6
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). Izmir: 1991-2020 normals, Izmir (3.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Athens is at its best in May, 27°C with 19mm of rain, and again in September and October, when the sea still holds 25°C and 23°C. It also has more months of light rain across the year.

Izmir peaks in the same months, 29°C in September, and July is all but dry at 1mm. Winter is where they separate: January and December bring 119mm and 127mm in Izmir against 59mm and 86mm in Athens, so a cool-season break is the safer bet in Athens.

Getting there

Flying fromAthensIzmir
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
1 h 5 m
€46-55
ADB · 13 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
3 h 45 m
€119-184
ADB · 13 km
ThessalonikiSKG
1 h 0 m
€103-128
ATH · 20 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
SMI · 83 km
HeraklionHER
1 h 0 m
€84-111
ATH · 20 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
MJT · 86 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€174-212
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
3 h 0 m
€204-238
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€214-254
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 40 m
€185-288
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
ADB · 13 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
3 h 25 m
€221-272
1 stop
ADB · 13 km
BerlinBER
2 h 45 m
€143-203
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 55 m
€177-214
1 stop
ADB · 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

MeasureAthensIzmir
Official languageGreekTurkish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m2 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsAdnan Menderes International Airport (ADB)13 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensIzmir
City population643,4524,493,242
People per km²16,4994,760
Museums within 10 km8829
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre8220
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 Izmir 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.