VacationSelector

Barcelona or Catania?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Barcelona
✓ Best match
71
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

Catania
52
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

BarcelonaCatania
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 7 points.7
BarcelonaCatania
Score6558
Swim season months35
Beaches 10 km205
Coast distance2 km1 km
Water distance2 km1 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 41 points.41
BarcelonaCatania
Score9049
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786637
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4114
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 9 points.9
BarcelonaCatania
Score6859
Museums within 10 km10534
Museums within 2 km of centre4927
Share of museums within 2 km %4779
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 35 points.35
BarcelonaCatania
Score8247
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711537
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641403
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6175
Nightclubs within 4 km24518
Nature & day trips. Barcelona leads by 19 points.19
BarcelonaCatania
Score5031
Protected land share 50 km %1010
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5161
Park area within 2 km49 hectares11 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 29 points.29
BarcelonaCatania
Score6536
Tourist attractions within 2 km6025
Park area within 2 km49 hectares11 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 34 points.34
BarcelonaCatania
Score7339
Notable places within 2 km25837
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 3 points.3
BarcelonaCatania
Score7168
Price level global60.864.9
Daily budget€122€155
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 1 points.1
BarcelonaCatania
Score7877
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C15.8 °C to 34.5 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm9 mm to 83 mm
Dry months55
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
Barcelona
14
14
16
19
22
26
28
29
26
22
18
15
Catania
16
16
19
21
26
31
34
35
30
26
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Catania
15
15
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Catania
65
45
42
32
18
11
9
9
49
51
71
83
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Catania
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
Catania
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
7
6
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Catania: 1991-2020 normals, Catania / Sigonella (18.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaCatania
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
1 h 55 m
€45-94
CTA · 4 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
1 h 20 m
€38-50
CTA · 4 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
3 h 0 m
€106-144
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
2 h 35 m
€91-153
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
BolognaBLQ
1 h 40 m
€79-175
BCN · 13 km
1 h 40 m
€38-100
CTA · 4 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
2 h 35 m
€133-162
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
VeniceVCE, TSF
1 h 45 m
€58-135
BCN · 13 km
1 h 45 m
€49-57
CTA · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
2 h 50 m
€201-205
CTA · 4 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
9 h 15 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 20 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
2 h 55 m
€157-299
CTA · 4 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

MeasureBarcelonaCatania
Official languageSpanishItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation9 m7 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsCatania-Fontanarossa Airport (CTA)4 km from centre95 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaCatania
City population1,731,649311,584
People per km²17,0941,704
Museums within 10 km9525
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre12830
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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