VacationSelector

Catania or Chicago?

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

Your match

Catania
52
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

Chicago
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on places to eat 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.

CataniaChicago
Beaches & swimming. Catania leads by 5 points.5
CataniaChicago
Score5853
Swim season months51
Beaches 10 km512
Coast distance1 km10,000 km
Water distance1 km1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 32 points.32
CataniaChicago
Score4981
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6372,147
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1437
Museums & heritage. Catania leads by 13 points.13
CataniaChicago
Score5946
Museums within 10 km3445
Museums within 2 km of centre2720
Share of museums within 2 km %7944
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 15 points.15
CataniaChicago
Score4762
Drinking venues within 4 km5371,123
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre403728
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7565
Nightclubs within 4 km1851
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 7 points.7
CataniaChicago
Score3138
Protected land share 50 km %106
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %61100
Park area within 2 km11 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 19 points.19
CataniaChicago
Score3655
Tourist attractions within 2 km2518
Park area within 2 km11 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 31 points.31
CataniaChicago
Score3970
Notable places within 2 km37217
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Catania leads by 25 points.25
CataniaChicago
Score6843
Price level global64.9100
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Catania leads by 20 points.20
CataniaChicago
Score7757
Monthly daytime high15.8 °C to 34.5 °C0.2 °C to 29.4 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 83 mm54 mm to 121 mm
Dry months50
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
Catania
16
16
19
21
26
31
34
35
30
26
21
17
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Sea temperature, °C
Catania
15
15
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Catania
65
45
42
32
18
11
9
9
49
51
71
83
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Daylight, hours per day
Catania
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Catania
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
7
6
5
4
Chicago
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Catania: 1991-2020 normals, Catania / Sigonella (18.9 km from centre). Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCataniaChicago
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€45-94
CTA · 4 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 20 m
€38-50
CTA · 4 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 15 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 35 m
€91-153
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
NaplesNAP
1 h 5 m
€44-56
CTA · 4 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 0 m
€106-144
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
9 h 0 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 10 m
€166-455
CTA · 4 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
MunichMUC
2 h 5 m
€195-231
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
9 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 55 m
€157-299
CTA · 4 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 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

MeasureCataniaChicago
Official languageItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation7 m179 m
Main airportCatania-Fontanarossa Airport (CTA)4 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCataniaChicago
City population311,5842,746,388
People per km²1,7044,529
Museums within 10 km2543
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre3087
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Catania or Chicago 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.