VacationSelector

Barcelona or Dresden?

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 nightlife with your weighting.

Dresden
48
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.

BarcelonaDresden
Beaches & swimming. Barcelona leads by 65 points.65
BarcelonaDresden
Score650
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km2022
Coast distance2 km267 km
Water distance2 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 29 points.29
BarcelonaDresden
Score9061
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786422
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4142
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 14 points.14
BarcelonaDresden
Score6854
Museums within 10 km10566
Museums within 2 km of centre4934
Share of museums within 2 km %4752
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 40 points.40
BarcelonaDresden
Score8242
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711359
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641265
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6174
Nightclubs within 4 km24543
Nature & day trips. Barcelona leads by 11 points.11
BarcelonaDresden
Score5039
Protected land share 50 km %1014
Landscape blanket share 50 km %09
Land share of disc %51100
Park area within 2 km49 hectares80 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 6 points.6
BarcelonaDresden
Score6559
Tourist attractions within 2 km6032
Park area within 2 km49 hectares80 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km32
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 20 points.20
BarcelonaDresden
Score7353
Notable places within 2 km25882
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 11 points.11
BarcelonaDresden
Score7160
Price level global60.875.9
Daily budget€122€163
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 16 points.16
BarcelonaDresden
Score7862
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C4 °C to 26.2 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm31 mm to 83 mm
Dry months54
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
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Dresden
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaDresden
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
1 h 25 m
€57-79
PRG · 112 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
2 h 45 m
€146-195
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
LEJ · 113 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 147 km
DohaDOH
6 h 25 m
€282-445
2 stops
BCN · 13 km
5 h 40 m
no fares
PRG · 112 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
11 h 0 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
9 h 20 m
€718-820
2 stops
BER · 147 km
Punta CanaPUJ
8 h 55 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
PRG · 112 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

MeasureBarcelonaDresden
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 m126 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaDresden
City population1,731,649564,904
People per km²17,0941,720
Museums within 10 km9570
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre12877
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 Dresden 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.