VacationSelector

Athens or Valletta?

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.

Valletta
60
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.

AthensValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 29 points.29
AthensValletta
Score4877
Swim season months56
Beaches 10 km1422
Coast distance6 km0 km
Water distance6 km0 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 11 points.11
AthensValletta
Score6958
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2535
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 12 points.12
AthensValletta
Score7361
Museums within 10 km12246
Museums within 2 km of centre7829
Share of museums within 2 km %6463
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Athens leads by 34 points.34
AthensValletta
Score8147
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5048
Nightclubs within 4 km13627
Nature & day trips. Valletta leads by 1 points.1
AthensValletta
Score4546
Protected land share 50 km %5
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %506
Park area within 2 km128 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 25 points.25
AthensValletta
Score7146
Tourist attractions within 2 km6832
Park area within 2 km128 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 14 points.14
AthensValletta
Score7561
Notable places within 2 km291133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 5 points.5
AthensValletta
Score7469
Price level global55.862.8
Daily budget€125€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 5 points.5
AthensValletta
Score7479
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm0 mm to 90 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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
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). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
2 h 15 m
€177-222
MLA · 6 km
ThessalonikiSKG
1 h 0 m
€103-128
ATH · 20 km
1 h 45 m
€122-197
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€214-254
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€174-212
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureAthensValletta
Official languageGreekEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m56 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensValletta
City population643,4526,444
People per km²16,4998,055
Museums within 10 km8815
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre8255
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 Valletta 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.