VacationSelector

Catania or Riga?

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

Catania
52
match

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

Riga
53
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips 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.

CataniaRiga
Beaches & swimming. Catania leads by 18 points.18
CataniaRiga
Score5840
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km557
Coast distance1 km12 km
Water distance1 km12 km
Places to eat. Riga leads by 10 points.10
CataniaRiga
Score4959
Restaurants within 2 km of centre637470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1433
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 2 points.2
CataniaRiga
Score5961
Museums within 10 km3469
Museums within 2 km of centre2747
Share of museums within 2 km %7968
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Riga leads by 4 points.4
CataniaRiga
Score4751
Drinking venues within 4 km537584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre403456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7578
Nightclubs within 4 km1854
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 13 points.13
CataniaRiga
Score3144
Protected land share 50 km %1010
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6173
Park area within 2 km11 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Catania leads by 1 points.1
CataniaRiga
Score3635
Tourist attractions within 2 km257
Park area within 2 km11 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 23 points.23
CataniaRiga
Score3962
Notable places within 2 km37137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 8 points.8
CataniaRiga
Score6876
Price level global64.953.7
Daily budget€155€132
Year-round weather. Catania leads by 25 points.25
CataniaRiga
Score7752
Monthly daytime high15.8 °C to 34.5 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 83 mm33 mm to 87 mm
Dry months53
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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Catania
15
15
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Catania
65
45
42
32
18
11
9
9
49
51
71
83
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Catania
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Catania
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
7
6
5
4
Riga
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). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCataniaRiga
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€45-94
CTA · 4 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 20 m
€38-50
CTA · 4 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 0 m
€106-144
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
3 h 45 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 25 m
€101-146
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 35 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
OsloOSL, TRF
3 h 40 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 5 m
€115-151
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 35 m
€91-153
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
Sharm el SheikhSSH
3 h 5 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 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

MeasureCataniaRiga
Official languageItalianLatvian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation7 m6 m
Main airportCatania-Fontanarossa Airport (CTA)4 km from centre95 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCataniaRiga
City population311,584588,911
People per km²1,704
Museums within 10 km2512
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre3055
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 Riga 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.