VacationSelector

Boston or Rome?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Boston
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration 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.

BostonRome
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 27 points.27
BostonRome
Score6033
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km683
Coast distance1 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 13 points.13
BostonRome
Score7360
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4522,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3210
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 41 points.41
BostonRome
Score4384
Museums within 10 km79161
Museums within 2 km of centre2779
Share of museums within 2 km %3449
Unesco sites within 50 km07
Nightlife. Rome leads by 16 points.16
BostonRome
Score5874
Drinking venues within 4 km8862,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre513912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5845
Nightclubs within 4 km4385
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 17 points.17
BostonRome
Score5370
Protected land share 50 km %1219
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7778
Park area within 2 km116 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 33 points.33
BostonRome
Score5386
Tourist attractions within 2 km28126
Park area within 2 km116 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km04
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 41 points.41
BostonRome
Score5899
Notable places within 2 km1111,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rome leads by 25 points.25
BostonRome
Score4368
Price level global10064.9
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 15 points.15
BostonRome
Score5671
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm21 mm to 114 mm
Dry months03
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
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonRome
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
MadridMAD
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
9 h 0 m
€487-550
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
Abu DhabiAUH
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
5 h 45 m
€280-355
2 stops
FCO · 23 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
9 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
11 h 45 m
€893-1016
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
11 h 15 m
€630-760
FCO · 23 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

MeasureBostonRome
Official languageItalian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation43 m21 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonRome
City population675,6472,748,109
People per km²2,9102,135
Museums within 10 km51177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km07
Distinct cuisines in the centre7465
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Boston or Rome 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.

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.