VacationSelector

Cologne or Palermo?

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, 2 points apart

Cologne
57
match

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

Palermo
55
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.

ColognePalermo
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 67 points.67
ColognePalermo
Score067
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km4013
Coast distance256 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 22 points.22
ColognePalermo
Score7250
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3513
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 10 points.10
ColognePalermo
Score6050
Museums within 10 km4732
Museums within 2 km of centre2726
Share of museums within 2 km %5781
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 11 points.11
ColognePalermo
Score6453
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6664
Nightclubs within 4 km9016
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 35 points.35
ColognePalermo
Score7136
Protected land share 50 km %534
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10045
Park area within 2 km118 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 31 points.31
ColognePalermo
Score7241
Tourist attractions within 2 km4316
Park area within 2 km118 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km60
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 4 points.4
ColognePalermo
Score5357
Notable places within 2 km81104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Palermo leads by 8 points.8
ColognePalermo
Score6068
Price level global75.964.9
Daily budget€163€155
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 17 points.17
ColognePalermo
Score6077
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months07
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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
5
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). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromColognePalermo
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 15 m
€183-194
PMO · 25 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
€175-215
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
€114-166
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
1 h 50 m
€49-107
PMO · 25 km
BolognaBLQ
1 h 35 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 30 m
€28-65
PMO · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
3 h 10 m
€151-346
1 stop
PMO · 25 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

MeasureColognePalermo
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 m14 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureColognePalermo
City population1,024,621630,167
People per km²2,5303,924
Museums within 10 km4042
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre8433
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

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