VacationSelector

Barcelona or Venice?

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.

Venice
57
match

Wins on sights concentration and 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.

BarcelonaVenice
Beaches & swimming. Venice leads by 4 points.4
BarcelonaVenice
Score6569
Swim season months34
Beaches 10 km2020
Coast distance2 km4 km
Water distance2 km4 km
Places to eat. Barcelona leads by 45 points.45
BarcelonaVenice
Score9045
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,786750
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4110
Museums & heritage. Venice leads by 4 points.4
BarcelonaVenice
Score6872
Museums within 10 km10557
Museums within 2 km of centre4945
Share of museums within 2 km %4779
Unesco sites within 50 km35
Nightlife. Barcelona leads by 47 points.47
BarcelonaVenice
Score8235
Drinking venues within 4 km2,711342
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,641306
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6189
Nightclubs within 4 km2453
Nature & day trips. Barcelona leads by 33 points.33
BarcelonaVenice
Score5017
Protected land share 50 km %104
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5170
Park area within 2 km49 hectares15 hectares
Good for families. Barcelona leads by 8 points.8
BarcelonaVenice
Score6557
Tourist attractions within 2 km6072
Park area within 2 km49 hectares15 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km33
Sights concentration. Venice leads by 10 points.10
BarcelonaVenice
Score7383
Notable places within 2 km258464
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Barcelona leads by 3 points.3
BarcelonaVenice
Score7168
Price level global60.864.9
Daily budget€122€155
Year-round weather. Barcelona leads by 12 points.12
BarcelonaVenice
Score7866
Monthly daytime high13.9 °C to 28.9 °C8 °C to 30.4 °C
Monthly rainfall27 mm to 83 mm36 mm to 106 mm
Dry months52
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
Venice
8
10
15
19
24
28
30
30
25
19
13
8
Sea temperature, °C
Barcelona
14
13
13
14
17
21
24
25
24
21
17
15
Venice
10
9
10
14
18
23
25
26
23
19
16
13
Rainfall, mm
Barcelona
41
32
40
47
44
27
27
51
83
82
45
36
Venice
38
36
54
78
91
75
65
74
106
89
95
60
Daylight, hours per day
Barcelona
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Venice
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Barcelona
5
5
7
8
8
9
10
9
7
6
4
4
Venice
3
4
5
6
7
8
10
9
6
4
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Barcelona: 1991-2020 normals, Barcelona / Aeropuerto (14.4 km from centre). Venice: 1991-2020 normals, Treviso / S. Angelo (26.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBarcelonaVenice
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€37-96
BCN · 13 km
2 h 0 m
€46-119
1 stop
VCE · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€79-101
BCN · 13 km
1 h 40 m
€68-109
VCE · 7 km
MadridMAD
1 h 15 m
€114-118
BCN · 13 km
2 h 20 m
€102-159
VCE · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 10 m
€132-158
BCN · 13 km
1 h 45 m
€190-215
1 stop
VCE · 7 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 40 m
€54-89
BCN · 13 km
1 h 10 m
€81-119
VCE · 7 km
PalmaPMI
55 m
€40-57
BCN · 13 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
TSF · 26 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 55 m
€562-701
BCN · 13 km
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 7 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
€369-388
BCN · 13 km
5 h 55 m
€366-421
2 stops
VCE · 7 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
11 h 0 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
VCE · 7 km
CancunCUN
10 h 35 m
no fares
BCN · 13 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
VRN · 113 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

MeasureBarcelonaVenice
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 m2 m
Main airportJosep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN)13 km from centre229 non-stop destinationsVenice Marco Polo Airport (VCE)7 km from centre98 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBarcelonaVenice
City population1,731,649250,369
People per km²17,094602
Museums within 10 km9552
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km35
Distinct cuisines in the centre12846
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months4 months

Where else could you go?

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