VacationSelector

Cologne or Limassol?

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

Your match

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

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

Limassol
46
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.

CologneLimassol
Beaches & swimming. Limassol leads by 79 points.79
CologneLimassol
Score079
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km4027
Coast distance256 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 29 points.29
CologneLimassol
Score7243
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142298
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3519
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 16 points.16
CologneLimassol
Score6044
Museums within 10 km4717
Museums within 2 km of centre2710
Share of museums within 2 km %5759
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 25 points.25
CologneLimassol
Score6439
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107340
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727256
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6675
Nightclubs within 4 km9020
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 49 points.49
CologneLimassol
Score7122
Protected land share 50 km %532
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10049
Park area within 2 km118 hectares32 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 56 points.56
CologneLimassol
Score7216
Tourist attractions within 2 km433
Park area within 2 km118 hectares32 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km60
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 39 points.39
CologneLimassol
Score5314
Notable places within 2 km819
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Limassol leads by 10 points.10
CologneLimassol
Score6070
Price level global75.961.4
Daily budget€163€129
Year-round weather. Limassol leads by 25 points.25
CologneLimassol
Score6085
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C16.5 °C to 31.2 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm0 mm to 98 mm
Dry months08
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
Limassol
17
17
19
22
25
29
31
31
30
27
23
19
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Limassol
18
17
17
18
20
23
26
27
26
25
22
20
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Limassol
81
47
29
17
10
2
1
0
5
14
42
98
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Limassol
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Limassol
6
6
8
9
11
12
13
12
10
9
7
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Limassol: 1998-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Akrotiri (11.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneLimassol
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
4 h 25 m
€125-167
PFO · 51 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ECN · 68 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
ECN · 68 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
PFO · 51 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
3 h 0 m
€206-323
1 stop
PFO · 51 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 5 m
€149-173
PFO · 51 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
LCA · 58 km
ThessalonikiSKG
2 h 40 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 55 m
€96-218
PFO · 51 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
3 h 35 m
€265-355
2 stops
PFO · 51 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
3 h 25 m
€125-152
1 stop
PFO · 51 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

MeasureCologneLimassol
Official languageGermanTurkish, Greek, Modern Greek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG240 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m10 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsLarnaca International Airport (LCA)58 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneLimassol
City population1,024,621107,970
People per km²2,5302,405
Museums within 10 km402
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre8428
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne or Limassol 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.