VacationSelector

Athens or Limassol?

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.

Limassol
46
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.

AthensLimassol
Beaches & swimming. Limassol leads by 31 points.31
AthensLimassol
Score4879
Swim season months56
Beaches 10 km1427
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 26 points.26
AthensLimassol
Score6943
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431298
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2519
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 29 points.29
AthensLimassol
Score7344
Museums within 10 km12217
Museums within 2 km of centre7810
Share of museums within 2 km %6459
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Athens leads by 42 points.42
AthensLimassol
Score8139
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718340
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354256
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5075
Nightclubs within 4 km13620
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 23 points.23
AthensLimassol
Score4522
Protected land share 50 km %52
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5049
Park area within 2 km128 hectares32 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 55 points.55
AthensLimassol
Score7116
Tourist attractions within 2 km683
Park area within 2 km128 hectares32 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 61 points.61
AthensLimassol
Score7514
Notable places within 2 km2919
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 4 points.4
AthensLimassol
Score7470
Price level global55.861.4
Daily budget€125€129
Year-round weather. Limassol leads by 11 points.11
AthensLimassol
Score7485
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C16.5 °C to 31.2 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm0 mm to 98 mm
Dry months78
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
Limassol
17
17
19
22
25
29
31
31
30
27
23
19
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Limassol
18
17
17
18
20
23
26
27
26
25
22
20
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Limassol
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Limassol
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Limassol
6
6
8
9
11
12
13
12
10
9
7
6

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). Limassol: 1998-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Akrotiri (11.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensLimassol
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 51 km
ThessalonikiSKG
1 h 0 m
€103-128
ATH · 20 km
1 h 55 m
€96-218
PFO · 51 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
1 h 5 m
€149-173
PFO · 51 km
ManchesterMAN
3 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 51 km
HeraklionHER
1 h 0 m
€84-111
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LCA · 58 km
ThiraJTR
55 m
€94-103
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LCA · 58 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
4 h 5 m
€197-331
1 stop
PFO · 51 km
ChaniaCHQ
1 h 0 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
PFO · 51 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 10 m
€83-197
ATH · 20 km
3 h 0 m
€206-323
1 stop
PFO · 51 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
ECN · 68 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

MeasureAthensLimassol
Official languageGreekTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m10 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsLarnaca International Airport (LCA)58 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensLimassol
City population643,452107,970
People per km²16,4992,405
Museums within 10 km882
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre8228
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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