VacationSelector

Catania or Cologne?

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 beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families 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.

CataniaCologne
Beaches & swimming. Catania leads by 58 points.58
CataniaCologne
Score580
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km540
Coast distance1 km256 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 23 points.23
CataniaCologne
Score4972
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6371,142
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1435
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 1 points.1
CataniaCologne
Score5960
Museums within 10 km3447
Museums within 2 km of centre2727
Share of museums within 2 km %7957
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CataniaCologne
Score4764
Drinking venues within 4 km5371,107
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre403727
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7566
Nightclubs within 4 km1890
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 40 points.40
CataniaCologne
Score3171
Protected land share 50 km %1053
Landscape blanket share 50 km %052
Land share of disc %61100
Park area within 2 km11 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 36 points.36
CataniaCologne
Score3672
Tourist attractions within 2 km2543
Park area within 2 km11 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km16
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 14 points.14
CataniaCologne
Score3953
Notable places within 2 km3781
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Catania leads by 8 points.8
CataniaCologne
Score6860
Price level global64.975.9
Daily budget€155€163
Year-round weather. Catania leads by 17 points.17
CataniaCologne
Score7760
Monthly daytime high15.8 °C to 34.5 °C6.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 83 mm48 mm to 81 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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Catania
15
15
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Catania
65
45
42
32
18
11
9
9
49
51
71
83
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Daylight, hours per day
Catania
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Catania
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
7
6
5
4
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Catania: 1991-2020 normals, Catania / Sigonella (18.9 km from centre). Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCataniaCologne
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€45-94
CTA · 4 km
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 20 m
€38-50
CTA · 4 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 10 m
€166-455
CTA · 4 km
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 0 m
€106-144
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
MunichMUC
2 h 5 m
€195-231
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
BolognaBLQ
1 h 40 m
€38-100
CTA · 4 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 5 m
€115-151
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
VeniceVCE, TSF
1 h 45 m
€49-57
CTA · 4 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
€89-123
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 55 m
€157-299
CTA · 4 km
4 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 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

MeasureCataniaCologne
Official languageItalianGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation7 m59 m
Main airportCatania-Fontanarossa Airport (CTA)4 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCataniaCologne
City population311,5841,024,621
People per km²1,7042,530
Museums within 10 km2540
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre3084
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Catania or Cologne 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. 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.