VacationSelector

Athens or Valencia?

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.

Valencia
64
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.

AthensValencia
Beaches & swimming. Valencia leads by 19 points.19
AthensValencia
Score4867
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km1412
Coast distance6 km3 km
Water distance6 km3 km
Places to eat. Valencia leads by 9 points.9
AthensValencia
Score6978
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4311,995
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2533
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 18 points.18
AthensValencia
Score7355
Museums within 10 km12259
Museums within 2 km of centre7826
Share of museums within 2 km %6444
Unesco sites within 50 km22
Nightlife. Athens leads by 11 points.11
AthensValencia
Score8170
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7181,513
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354957
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5063
Nightclubs within 4 km136108
Nature & day trips. Valencia leads by 8 points.8
AthensValencia
Score4553
Protected land share 50 km %510
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5064
Park area within 2 km128 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 29 points.29
AthensValencia
Score7142
Tourist attractions within 2 km6812
Park area within 2 km128 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 23 points.23
AthensValencia
Score7552
Notable places within 2 km29178
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 3 points.3
AthensValencia
Score7471
Price level global55.860.8
Daily budget€125€122
Year-round weather. Valencia leads by 10 points.10
AthensValencia
Score7484
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm7 mm to 70 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
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Valencia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5

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). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensValencia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€70-117
VLC · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 50 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 0 m
€32-53
VLC · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
1 h 50 m
€51-87
VLC · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
3 h 35 m
€167-378
VLC · 9 km
MadridMAD
3 h 30 m
€156-172
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 0 m
€69-81
VLC · 9 km
MarrakechRAK
4 h 10 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€72-115
VLC · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
9 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 9 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

MeasureAthensValencia
Official languageGreekSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m15 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensValencia
City population643,452840,792
People per km²16,4996,242
Museums within 10 km8846
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km22
Distinct cuisines in the centre8292
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 Valencia 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.