VacationSelector

Barcelona or Valletta?

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 nightlife and places to eat 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.

BarcelonaValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 12 points.12
BarcelonaValletta
Score6577
Swim season months36
Beaches 10 km2022
Coast distance2 km0 km
Water distance2 km0 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 32 points.32
BarcelonaValletta
Score9058
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4135
Museums & heritage. Barcelona leads by 7 points.7
BarcelonaValletta
Score6861
Museums within 10 km10546
Museums within 2 km of centre4929
Share of museums within 2 km %4763
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 35 points.35
BarcelonaValletta
Score8247
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6148
Nightclubs within 4 km24527
Nature & day trips. Barcelona leads by 4 points.4
BarcelonaValletta
Score5046
Protected land share 50 km %10
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %516
Park area within 2 km49 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 19 points.19
BarcelonaValletta
Score6546
Tourist attractions within 2 km6032
Park area within 2 km49 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Barcelona leads by 12 points.12
BarcelonaValletta
Score7361
Notable places within 2 km258133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 2 points.2
BarcelonaValletta
Score7169
Price level global60.862.8
Daily budget€122€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 1 points.1
BarcelonaValletta
Score7879
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months56
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
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. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 30 m
€33-92
BCN · 13 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
PalmaPMI
55 m
€40-57
BCN · 13 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 55 m
€77-116
BCN · 13 km
2 h 50 m
€83-115
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
1 h 55 m
€121-137
BCN · 13 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€369-388
BCN · 13 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 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

MeasureBarcelonaValletta
Official languageSpanishEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation9 m56 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaValletta
City population1,731,6496,444
People per km²17,0948,055
Museums within 10 km9515
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre12855
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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