VacationSelector

Barcelona or Cologne?

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 beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families 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.

BarcelonaCologne
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 65 points.65
BarcelonaCologne
Score650
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km2040
Coast distance2 km256 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 18 points.18
BarcelonaCologne
Score9072
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,7861,142
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4135
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 8 points.8
BarcelonaCologne
Score6860
Museums within 10 km10547
Museums within 2 km of centre4927
Share of museums within 2 km %4757
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 18 points.18
BarcelonaCologne
Score8264
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7111,107
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641727
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6166
Nightclubs within 4 km24590
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 21 points.21
BarcelonaCologne
Score5071
Protected land share 50 km %1053
Landscape blanket share 50 km %052
Land share of disc %51100
Park area within 2 km49 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 7 points.7
BarcelonaCologne
Score6572
Tourist attractions within 2 km6043
Park area within 2 km49 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km36
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 20 points.20
BarcelonaCologne
Score7353
Notable places within 2 km25881
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 11 points.11
BarcelonaCologne
Score7160
Price level global60.875.9
Daily budget€122€163
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 18 points.18
BarcelonaCologne
Score7860
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C6.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm48 mm to 81 mm
Dry months50
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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaCologne
PalmaPMI
55 m
€40-57
BCN · 13 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 15 m
€173-293
BCN · 13 km
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
MunichMUC
1 h 55 m
€121-137
BCN · 13 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 15 m
€100-142
1 stop
BCN · 13 km
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
DohaDOH
6 h 25 m
€282-445
2 stops
BCN · 13 km
6 h 15 m
no fares
DUS · 41 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

MeasureBarcelonaCologne
Official languageSpanishGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation9 m59 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaCologne
City population1,731,6491,024,621
People per km²17,0942,530
Museums within 10 km9540
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre12884
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

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