VacationSelector

Brussels or Palermo?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Brussels
56
match

Wins on places to eat and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Palermo
55
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.

BrusselsPalermo
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 67 points.67
BrusselsPalermo
Score067
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km013
Coast distance56 km1 km
Water distance—1 km
Places to eat. Brussels leads by 31 points.31
BrusselsPalermo
Score8150
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,779807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4413
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 30 points.30
BrusselsPalermo
Score8050
Museums within 10 km12032
Museums within 2 km of centre5926
Share of museums within 2 km %4981
Unesco sites within 50 km101
Nightlife. Brussels leads by 15 points.15
BrusselsPalermo
Score6853
Drinking venues within 4 km1,414799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre862515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6164
Nightclubs within 4 km8416
Nature & day trips. Palermo leads by 5 points.5
BrusselsPalermo
Score3136
Protected land share 50 km %64
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10045
Park area within 2 km65 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Brussels leads by 15 points.15
BrusselsPalermo
Score5641
Tourist attractions within 2 km2816
Park area within 2 km65 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Brussels leads by 16 points.16
BrusselsPalermo
Score7357
Notable places within 2 km254104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Palermo leads by 8 points.8
BrusselsPalermo
Score6068
Price level global76.264.9
Daily budget€180€155
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 20 points.20
BrusselsPalermo
Score5777
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months07
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
Brussels
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
6
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Brussels
No coastline within reach
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
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. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsPalermo
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 11 km
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
1 h 50 m
€49-107
PMO · 25 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
2 h 25 m
€92-140
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 11 km
2 h 15 m
€183-194
PMO · 25 km
VeniceVCE, TSF
1 h 35 m
no fares
CRL · 43 km
1 h 40 m
€29-53
PMO · 25 km
NaplesNAP
2 h 10 m
no fares
CRL · 43 km
1 h 0 m
€42-84
PMO · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 30 m
no fares
BRU · 11 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

MeasureBrusselsPalermo
Official languageFrench, German, DutchItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation70 m14 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsPalermo
City population195,546630,167
People per km²5,9083,924
Museums within 10 km10542
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km101
Distinct cuisines in the centre10933
Swim season, months above 21 °C–5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Brussels 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.