VacationSelector

Catania or Ghent?

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, 2 points apart

Catania
52
match

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

Ghent
50
match

Wins on places to eat 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.

CataniaGhent
Beaches & swimming. Catania leads by 32 points.32
CataniaGhent
Score5826
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km58
Coast distance1 km32 km
Water distance1 km32 km
Places to eat. Ghent leads by 21 points.21
CataniaGhent
Score4970
Restaurants within 2 km of centre637764
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1449
Museums & heritage. Catania leads by 1 points.1
CataniaGhent
Score5958
Museums within 10 km3424
Museums within 2 km of centre2720
Share of museums within 2 km %7983
Unesco sites within 50 km35
Nightlife. Ghent leads by 2 points.2
CataniaGhent
Score4749
Drinking venues within 4 km537570
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre403446
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7578
Nightclubs within 4 km1826
Nature & day trips. Ghent leads by 3 points.3
CataniaGhent
Score3134
Protected land share 50 km %107
Landscape blanket share 50 km %04
Land share of disc %6187
Park area within 2 km11 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. Ghent leads by 14 points.14
CataniaGhent
Score3650
Tourist attractions within 2 km2519
Park area within 2 km11 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Ghent leads by 7 points.7
CataniaGhent
Score3946
Notable places within 2 km3755
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Catania leads by 8 points.8
CataniaGhent
Score6860
Price level global64.976.2
Daily budget€155€180
Year-round weather. Catania leads by 21 points.21
CataniaGhent
Score7756
Monthly daytime high15.8 °C to 34.5 °C6.4 °C to 22 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 83 mm35 mm to 79 mm
Dry months51
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
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Catania
15
15
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Catania
65
45
42
32
18
11
9
9
49
51
71
83
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Daylight, hours per day
Catania
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Catania
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
7
6
5
4
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Catania: 1991-2020 normals, Catania / Sigonella (18.9 km from centre). Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCataniaGhent
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€45-94
CTA · 4 km
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 56 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 20 m
€38-50
CTA · 4 km
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
MadridMAD
2 h 35 m
€133-162
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 0 m
€106-144
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 5 m
€89-123
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
VeniceVCE, TSF
1 h 45 m
€49-57
CTA · 4 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
CRL · 84 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 10 m
€166-455
CTA · 4 km
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
BolognaBLQ
1 h 40 m
€38-100
CTA · 4 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
CRL · 84 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 15 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 25 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 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

MeasureCataniaGhent
Official languageItalianFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation7 m12 m
Main airportCatania-Fontanarossa Airport (CTA)4 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCataniaGhent
City population311,584272,657
People per km²1,7041,728
Museums within 10 km2530
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km35
Distinct cuisines in the centre3083
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Catania or Ghent 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.