VacationSelector

Cologne or Valletta?

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

Your match

Cologne
57
match

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

Valletta
✓ Best match
60
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.

CologneValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 77 points.77
CologneValletta
Score077
Swim season months06
Beaches 10 km4022
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 14 points.14
CologneValletta
Score7258
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3535
Museums & heritage. Valletta leads by 1 points.1
CologneValletta
Score6061
Museums within 10 km4746
Museums within 2 km of centre2729
Share of museums within 2 km %5763
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
CologneValletta
Score6447
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6648
Nightclubs within 4 km9027
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 25 points.25
CologneValletta
Score7146
Protected land share 50 km %53
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %1006
Park area within 2 km118 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 26 points.26
CologneValletta
Score7246
Tourist attractions within 2 km4332
Park area within 2 km118 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km61
Sights concentration. Valletta leads by 8 points.8
CologneValletta
Score5361
Notable places within 2 km81133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valletta leads by 9 points.9
CologneValletta
Score6069
Price level global75.962.8
Daily budget€163€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 19 points.19
CologneValletta
Score6079
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months06
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 15 m
€177-222
MLA · 6 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
2 h 15 m
€111-180
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
2 h 5 m
€56-95
MLA · 6 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 35 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureCologneValletta
Official languageGermanEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m56 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneValletta
City population1,024,6216,444
People per km²2,5308,055
Museums within 10 km4015
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre8455
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 Valletta 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.