VacationSelector

Catania or Thessaloniki?

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 museums & heritage and year-round weather with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on nature & day trips and nightlife 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.

CataniaThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Catania leads by 3 points.3
CataniaThessaloniki
Score5855
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km54
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Thessaloniki leads by 1 points.1
CataniaThessaloniki
Score4950
Restaurants within 2 km of centre637640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1415
Museums & heritage. Catania leads by 10 points.10
CataniaThessaloniki
Score5949
Museums within 10 km3434
Museums within 2 km of centre2722
Share of museums within 2 km %7965
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 20 points.20
CataniaThessaloniki
Score4767
Drinking venues within 4 km5371,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre403805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7557
Nightclubs within 4 km1861
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 34 points.34
CataniaThessaloniki
Score3165
Protected land share 50 km %1025
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6183
Park area within 2 km11 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Thessaloniki leads by 5 points.5
CataniaThessaloniki
Score3641
Tourist attractions within 2 km2516
Park area within 2 km11 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Thessaloniki leads by 17 points.17
CataniaThessaloniki
Score3956
Notable places within 2 km3798
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 6 points.6
CataniaThessaloniki
Score6874
Price level global64.955.8
Daily budget€155€125
Year-round weather. Catania leads by 5 points.5
CataniaThessaloniki
Score7772
Monthly daytime high15.8 °C to 34.5 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall9 mm to 83 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months59
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Catania
15
15
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Catania
65
45
42
32
18
11
9
9
49
51
71
83
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Catania
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Catania
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
7
6
5
4
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Catania: 1991-2020 normals, Catania / Sigonella (18.9 km from centre). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCataniaThessaloniki
AthensATH
1 h 35 m
no fares
CTA · 4 km
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 55 m
€45-94
CTA · 4 km
2 h 10 m
€129-217
SKG · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 20 m
€38-50
CTA · 4 km
1 h 45 m
€117-203
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 0 m
€106-144
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
BolognaBLQ
1 h 40 m
€38-100
CTA · 4 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
2 h 5 m
€195-231
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
2 h 40 m
€157-220
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
2 h 40 m
€127-199
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 5 m
€115-151
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
1 h 50 m
€125-175
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 25 m
€101-146
1 stop
CTA · 4 km
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 55 m
€157-299
CTA · 4 km
2 h 20 m
€208-315
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasureCataniaThessaloniki
Official languageItalianGreek
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 destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureCataniaThessaloniki
City population311,584309,617
People per km²1,70416,042
Museums within 10 km2531
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre3045
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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