VacationSelector

Brussels or Rome?

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

Your match

Brussels
56
match

Wins on places to eat with your weighting.

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

BrusselsRome
Beaches & swimming. Rome leads by 33 points.33
BrusselsRome
Score033
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km03
Coast distance56 km24 km
Water distance—24 km
Places to eat. Brussels leads by 21 points.21
BrusselsRome
Score8160
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7792,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4410
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 4 points.4
BrusselsRome
Score8084
Museums within 10 km120161
Museums within 2 km of centre5979
Share of museums within 2 km %4949
Unesco sites within 50 km107
Nightlife. Rome leads by 6 points.6
BrusselsRome
Score6874
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4142,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre862912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6145
Nightclubs within 4 km8485
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 39 points.39
BrusselsRome
Score3170
Protected land share 50 km %619
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10078
Park area within 2 km65 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 30 points.30
BrusselsRome
Score5686
Tourist attractions within 2 km28126
Park area within 2 km65 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 26 points.26
BrusselsRome
Score7399
Notable places within 2 km2541,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rome leads by 8 points.8
BrusselsRome
Score6068
Price level global76.264.9
Daily budget€180€155
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 14 points.14
BrusselsRome
Score5771
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 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
Brussels
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
6
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Brussels
No coastline within reach
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
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. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsRome
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 11 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 11 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 11 km
2 h 15 m
€136-291
FCO · 23 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 11 km
1 h 15 m
€84-118
FCO · 23 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
5 h 45 m
€270-340
FCO · 23 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
11 h 45 m
€893-1016
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
10 h 15 m
no fares
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

MeasureBrusselsRome
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 m21 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsRome
City population195,5462,748,109
People per km²5,9082,135
Museums within 10 km105177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km107
Distinct cuisines in the centre10965
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 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. 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.