VacationSelector

Chicago or Rome?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Chicago
56
match

Wins on places to eat and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

ChicagoRome
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 20 points.20
ChicagoRome
Score5333
Swim season months15
Beaches 10 km123
Coast distance10,000 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 21 points.21
ChicagoRome
Score8160
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1472,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3710
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 38 points.38
ChicagoRome
Score4684
Museums within 10 km45161
Museums within 2 km of centre2079
Share of museums within 2 km %4449
Unesco sites within 50 km17
Nightlife. Rome leads by 12 points.12
ChicagoRome
Score6274
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1232,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6545
Nightclubs within 4 km5185
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 32 points.32
ChicagoRome
Score3870
Protected land share 50 km %619
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10078
Park area within 2 km118 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 31 points.31
ChicagoRome
Score5586
Tourist attractions within 2 km18126
Park area within 2 km118 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 29 points.29
ChicagoRome
Score7099
Notable places within 2 km2171,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rome leads by 25 points.25
ChicagoRome
Score4368
Price level global10064.9
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 14 points.14
ChicagoRome
Score5771
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm21 mm to 114 mm
Dry months03
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
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoRome
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
9 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
9 h 0 m
€487-550
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
3 h 50 m
€253
ORD · 25 km
12 h 40 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
Abu DhabiAUH
14 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
5 h 45 m
€280-355
2 stops
FCO · 23 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

MeasureChicagoRome
Official languageItalian
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m21 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoRome
City population2,746,3882,748,109
People per km²4,5292,135
Museums within 10 km43177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km17
Distinct cuisines in the centre8765
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Chicago or Rome 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.

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.