VacationSelector

Athens or Palermo?

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 nightlife with your weighting.

Palermo
55
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.

AthensPalermo
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 19 points.19
AthensPalermo
Score4867
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km1413
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 19 points.19
AthensPalermo
Score6950
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2513
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 23 points.23
AthensPalermo
Score7350
Museums within 10 km12232
Museums within 2 km of centre7826
Share of museums within 2 km %6481
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Athens leads by 28 points.28
AthensPalermo
Score8153
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5064
Nightclubs within 4 km13616
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 9 points.9
AthensPalermo
Score4536
Protected land share 50 km %54
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5045
Park area within 2 km128 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 30 points.30
AthensPalermo
Score7141
Tourist attractions within 2 km6816
Park area within 2 km128 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 18 points.18
AthensPalermo
Score7557
Notable places within 2 km291104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 6 points.6
AthensPalermo
Score7468
Price level global55.864.9
Daily budget€125€155
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 3 points.3
AthensPalermo
Score7477
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months77
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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Palermo
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
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
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). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensPalermo
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
2 h 15 m
€183-194
PMO · 25 km
HeraklionHER
1 h 0 m
€84-111
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
ThiraJTR
55 m
€94-103
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
NaplesNAP
1 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 0 m
€42-84
PMO · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
3 h 10 m
€151-346
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
PMO · 25 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

MeasureAthensPalermo
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 m14 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensPalermo
City population643,452630,167
People per km²16,4993,924
Museums within 10 km8842
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre8233
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 Palermo 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.