VacationSelector

Cape Town or Genoa?

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

Cape Town
57
match

Wins on places to eat and value for money with your weighting.

Genoa
56
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.

Cape TownGenoa
Beaches & swimming. Genoa leads by 13 points.13
Cape TownGenoa
Score6073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km2937
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Cape Town leads by 17 points.17
Cape TownGenoa
Score6750
Restaurants within 2 km of centre650691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4214
Museums & heritage. Genoa leads by 1 points.1
Cape TownGenoa
Score5455
Museums within 10 km2547
Museums within 2 km of centre2033
Share of museums within 2 km %8070
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Genoa leads by 3 points.3
Cape TownGenoa
Score4750
Drinking venues within 4 km483637
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre389419
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8166
Nightclubs within 4 km4717
Nature & day trips. Cape Town leads by 1 points.1
Cape TownGenoa
Score3635
Protected land share 50 km %68
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4261
Park area within 2 km27 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Genoa leads by 2 points.2
Cape TownGenoa
Score3638
Tourist attractions within 2 km1921
Park area within 2 km27 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Genoa leads by 16 points.16
Cape TownGenoa
Score4561
Notable places within 2 km51130
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cape Town leads by 17 points.17
Cape TownGenoa
Score8568
Price level global40.564.9
Daily budget—€155
Year-round weather. Cape Town leads by 13 points.13
Cape TownGenoa
Score8673
Monthly daytime high18 °C to 27.5 °C11.7 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall10 mm to 97 mm12 mm to 122 mm
Dry months63
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
Cape Town
27
28
26
24
21
18
18
18
20
22
24
26
Genoa
12
12
15
18
21
25
27
28
25
20
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Cape Town
18
18
17
16
15
15
15
15
15
15
16
17
Genoa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Cape Town
10
11
13
42
65
97
89
76
47
32
27
13
Genoa
58
41
47
67
40
26
12
20
72
101
122
89
Daylight, hours per day
Cape Town
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Genoa
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cape Town
12
10
9
8
6
6
6
7
8
9
10
11
Genoa
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
10
7
6
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cape Town: 1991-2020 normals, Cape Town Airport (17.5 km from centre). Genoa: 1991-2020 normals, Genova / Sestri (6.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCape TownGenoa
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
15 h 25 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 137 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 35 m
€717-799
1 stop
CPT · 18 km
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 137 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 45 m
€632-724
1 stop
CPT · 18 km
1 h 15 m
€67-76
LIN · 119 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
9 h 40 m
€611-615
1 stop
CPT · 18 km
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 137 km
DohaDOH
9 h 25 m
€850-932
2 stops
CPT · 18 km
5 h 50 m
no fares
MXP · 137 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
12 h 5 m
€634-815
CPT · 18 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
GOA · 7 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
8 h 10 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
11 h 50 m
€1,114-1167
2 stops
MXP · 137 km
MunichMUC
11 h 30 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
1 h 15 m
€207-240
1 stop
GOA · 7 km
AmsterdamAMS
12 h 5 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
1 h 45 m
€223-292
2 stops
GOA · 7 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
12 h 0 m
no fares
CPT · 18 km
12 h 50 m
no fares
MXP · 137 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

MeasureCape TownGenoa
Official languageEnglish, Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Venda, Northern Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Sesotho, Southern Ndebele, South African Sign LanguageItalian
CurrencyRand (ZAR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCMN230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+2UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation5 m20 m
Main airportCape Town International Airport (CPT)18 km from centre44 non-stop destinationsGenoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA)7 km from centre23 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCape TownGenoa
City population3,776,313558,745
People per km²1,5382,325
Museums within 10 km2251
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6541
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cape Town or Genoa 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.