VacationSelector

Barcelona or Palermo?

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.

Palermo
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BarcelonaPalermo
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 2 points.2
BarcelonaPalermo
Score6567
Swim season months35
Beaches 10 km2013
Coast distance2 km1 km
Water distance2 km1 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 40 points.40
BarcelonaPalermo
Score9050
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4113
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 18 points.18
BarcelonaPalermo
Score6850
Museums within 10 km10532
Museums within 2 km of centre4926
Share of museums within 2 km %4781
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 29 points.29
BarcelonaPalermo
Score8253
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6164
Nightclubs within 4 km24516
Nature & day trips. Barcelona leads by 14 points.14
BarcelonaPalermo
Score5036
Protected land share 50 km %104
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5145
Park area within 2 km49 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 24 points.24
BarcelonaPalermo
Score6541
Tourist attractions within 2 km6016
Park area within 2 km49 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 16 points.16
BarcelonaPalermo
Score7357
Notable places within 2 km258104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 3 points.3
BarcelonaPalermo
Score7168
Price level global60.864.9
Daily budget€122€155
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 1 points.1
BarcelonaPalermo
Score7877
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months57
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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Palermo
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
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
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). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaPalermo
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
2 h 25 m
€92-140
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
PalmaPMI
55 m
€40-57
BCN · 13 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
BolognaBLQ
1 h 40 m
€79-175
BCN · 13 km
1 h 30 m
€28-65
PMO · 25 km
NaplesNAP
1 h 50 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
1 h 0 m
€42-84
PMO · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 20 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
3 h 10 m
€151-346
1 stop
PMO · 25 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

MeasureBarcelonaPalermo
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 m14 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaPalermo
City population1,731,649630,167
People per km²17,0943,924
Museums within 10 km9542
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre12833
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 Palermo 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.