VacationSelector

Catania or Lyon?

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, level with your weighting

Catania
52
match

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

Lyon
52
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.

CataniaLyon
Beaches & swimming. Catania leads by 58 points.58
CataniaLyon
Score580
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km526
Coast distance1 km253 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 30 points.30
CataniaLyon
Score4979
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6371,691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1440
Museums & heritage. Catania leads by 4 points.4
CataniaLyon
Score5955
Museums within 10 km3453
Museums within 2 km of centre2725
Share of museums within 2 km %7947
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 11 points.11
CataniaLyon
Score4758
Drinking venues within 4 km537866
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre403611
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7571
Nightclubs within 4 km1847
Nature & day trips. Lyon leads by 2 points.2
CataniaLyon
Score3133
Protected land share 50 km %106
Landscape blanket share 50 km %06
Land share of disc %61100
Park area within 2 km11 hectares120 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 23 points.23
CataniaLyon
Score3659
Tourist attractions within 2 km2525
Park area within 2 km11 hectares120 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Lyon leads by 15 points.15
CataniaLyon
Score3954
Notable places within 2 km3786
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Catania leads by 6 points.6
CataniaLyon
Score6862
Price level global64.973.7
Daily budget€155€160
Year-round weather. Catania leads by 13 points.13
CataniaLyon
Score7764
Monthly daytime high15.8 °C to 34.5 °C7 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 83 mm43 mm to 101 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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Catania
15
15
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Lyon
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Catania
65
45
42
32
18
11
9
9
49
51
71
83
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Daylight, hours per day
Catania
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Catania
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
7
6
5
4
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
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). Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCataniaLyon
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 20 m
€38-50
CTA · 4 km
1 h 30 m
€79-99
LYS · 20 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€45-94
CTA · 4 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 0 m
€106-144
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 35 m
€91-153
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 10 m
€166-455
CTA · 4 km
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
BolognaBLQ
1 h 40 m
€38-100
CTA · 4 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
VeniceVCE, TSF
1 h 45 m
€49-57
CTA · 4 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 25 m
€101-146
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
9 h 0 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 55 m
€157-299
CTA · 4 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
GNB · 59 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 2026-09 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

MeasureCataniaLyon
Official languageItalianFrench
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 m160 m
Main airportCatania-Fontanarossa Airport (CTA)4 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCataniaLyon
City population311,584519,127
People per km²1,70410,838
Museums within 10 km2542
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre30148
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 Lyon 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.