VacationSelector

Cologne or Venice?

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, level with your weighting

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and nightlife with your weighting.

Venice
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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.

CologneVenice
Beaches & swimming. Venice leads by 69 points.69
CologneVenice
Score069
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km4020
Coast distance256 km4 km
Water distance4 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 27 points.27
CologneVenice
Score7245
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,142750
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3510
Museums & heritage. Venice leads by 12 points.12
CologneVenice
Score6072
Museums within 10 km4757
Museums within 2 km of centre2745
Share of museums within 2 km %5779
Unesco sites within 50 km35
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 29 points.29
CologneVenice
Score6435
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107342
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727306
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6689
Nightclubs within 4 km903
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 54 points.54
CologneVenice
Score7117
Protected land share 50 km %534
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km118 hectares15 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 15 points.15
CologneVenice
Score7257
Tourist attractions within 2 km4372
Park area within 2 km118 hectares15 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km63
Sights concentration. Venice leads by 30 points.30
CologneVenice
Score5383
Notable places within 2 km81464
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Venice leads by 8 points.8
CologneVenice
Score6068
Price level global75.964.9
Daily budget€163€155
Year-round weather. Venice leads by 6 points.6
CologneVenice
Score6066
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C8 °C to 30.4 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm36 mm to 106 mm
Dry months02
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
Venice
8
10
15
19
24
28
30
30
25
19
13
8
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Venice
10
9
10
14
18
23
25
26
23
19
16
13
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Venice
38
36
54
78
91
75
65
74
106
89
95
60
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Venice
9
10
12
14
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
Venice
3
4
5
6
7
8
10
9
6
4
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Venice: 1991-2020 normals, Treviso / S. Angelo (26.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneVenice
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
2 h 0 m
€46-119
1 stop
VCE · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
2 h 20 m
€148-150
VCE · 7 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
TSF · 26 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
1 h 40 m
€68-109
VCE · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
1 h 45 m
€41-56
VCE · 7 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 5 m
€268-289
VCE · 7 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
1 h 10 m
€65-121
VCE · 7 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
1 h 10 m
€81-119
VCE · 7 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
2 h 20 m
€102-159
VCE · 7 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 35 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
5 h 55 m
€366-421
2 stops
VCE · 7 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

MeasureCologneVenice
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 m2 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsVenice Marco Polo Airport (VCE)7 km from centre98 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneVenice
City population1,024,621250,369
People per km²2,530602
Museums within 10 km4052
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km35
Distinct cuisines in the centre8446
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 Venice 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.