VacationSelector

Athens or Marseille?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Marseille
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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.

AthensMarseille
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 19 points.19
AthensMarseille
Score4867
Swim season months52
Beaches 10 km1464
Coast distance6 km0 km
Water distance6 km0 km
Places to eat. Marseille leads by 6 points.6
AthensMarseille
Score6975
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4311,320
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2539
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 23 points.23
AthensMarseille
Score7350
Museums within 10 km12233
Museums within 2 km of centre7823
Share of museums within 2 km %6470
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Athens leads by 33 points.33
AthensMarseille
Score8148
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718544
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354454
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5083
Nightclubs within 4 km13630
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 8 points.8
AthensMarseille
Score4537
Protected land share 50 km %515
Landscape blanket share 50 km %013
Land share of disc %5056
Park area within 2 km128 hectares25 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 27 points.27
AthensMarseille
Score7144
Tourist attractions within 2 km6817
Park area within 2 km128 hectares25 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 17 points.17
AthensMarseille
Score7558
Notable places within 2 km291111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 12 points.12
AthensMarseille
Score7462
Price level global55.873.7
Daily budget€125€160
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 1 points.1
AthensMarseille
Score7475
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C11.8 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm11 mm to 82 mm
Dry months76
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
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Marseille
9
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
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
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). Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensMarseille
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
3 h 10 m
€195-281
ATH · 20 km
1 h 40 m
€86-123
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
HeraklionHER
1 h 0 m
€84-111
ATH · 20 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€214-254
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
9 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 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

MeasureAthensMarseille
Official languageGreekFrench
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 m0 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensMarseille
City population643,452886,040
People per km²16,4993,683
Museums within 10 km8827
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre8293
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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