VacationSelector

Cologne or Genoa?

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

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

Genoa
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

CologneGenoa
Beaches & swimming. Genoa leads by 73 points.73
CologneGenoa
Score073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km4037
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 22 points.22
CologneGenoa
Score7250
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3514
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 5 points.5
CologneGenoa
Score6055
Museums within 10 km4747
Museums within 2 km of centre2733
Share of museums within 2 km %5770
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 14 points.14
CologneGenoa
Score6450
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107637
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727419
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6666
Nightclubs within 4 km9017
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 36 points.36
CologneGenoa
Score7135
Protected land share 50 km %538
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10061
Park area within 2 km118 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 34 points.34
CologneGenoa
Score7238
Tourist attractions within 2 km4321
Park area within 2 km118 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km60
Sights concentration. Genoa leads by 8 points.8
CologneGenoa
Score5361
Notable places within 2 km81130
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Genoa leads by 8 points.8
CologneGenoa
Score6068
Price level global75.964.9
Daily budget€163€155
Year-round weather. Genoa leads by 13 points.13
CologneGenoa
Score6073
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C11.7 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm12 mm to 122 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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Genoa
12
12
15
18
21
25
27
28
25
20
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Genoa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Genoa
58
41
47
67
40
26
12
20
72
101
122
89
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Genoa
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Genoa
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
10
7
6
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Genoa: 1991-2020 normals, Genova / Sestri (6.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneGenoa
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 137 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
3 h 5 m
no fares
MXP · 137 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MXP · 137 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
GOA · 7 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 137 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 25 m
€65-131
MXP · 137 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€203-369
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
2 h 35 m
€78-142
MXP · 137 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 15 m
€207-240
1 stop
GOA · 7 km
AthensATH
3 h 0 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 25 m
€91-99
MXP · 137 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 35 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 137 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

MeasureCologneGenoa
Official languageGermanItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m20 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsGenoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA)7 km from centre23 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneGenoa
City population1,024,621558,745
People per km²2,5302,325
Museums within 10 km4051
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre8441
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne or Genoa 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.