VacationSelector

Cordoba or Madrid?

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

Your match

Cordoba
47
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Cordoba if you want a small city you can cross on foot, warmer through spring and autumn, with its sights within a short walk of each other and summer highs of 37°C if you can take them.

Choose Madrid if you want breadth: far more restaurants and kitchens, far more bars and clubs, far more museums, more protected countryside within reach and theme parks for children.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

CordobaMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Cordoba and Madrid are level on 0.
CordobaMadrid
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km04
Coast distance134 km305 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 36 points.36
CordobaMadrid
Score4783
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6163,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1328
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 28 points.28
CordobaMadrid
Score4775
Museums within 10 km2097
Museums within 2 km of centre1959
Share of museums within 2 km %9561
Unesco sites within 50 km24
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 38 points.38
CordobaMadrid
Score4381
Drinking venues within 4 km4442,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3531,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8062
Nightclubs within 4 km14341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 26 points.26
CordobaMadrid
Score3763
Protected land share 50 km %619
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km108 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 14 points.14
CordobaMadrid
Score6377
Tourist attractions within 2 km5961
Park area within 2 km108 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 31 points.31
CordobaMadrid
Score4475
Notable places within 2 km48288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Cordoba and Madrid are level on 71.
CordobaMadrid
Score7171
Price level global60.860.8
Daily budget€122€122
Year-round weather. Cordoba and Madrid are level on 72.
CordobaMadrid
Score7272
Monthly daytime high15.1 °C to 37.1 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall1 mm to 91 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months47
0255075100

Where they differ

Cordoba runs warmer all year, 15-37°C against Madrid's 10-33°C, with more sunshine at 2984 hours, and it is far smaller yet has about as many tourist attractions near the centre.

Madrid has many times as many restaurants near the centre, with a wider range of kitchens, many times as many bars and clubs, and many times as many museums, plus 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Cordoba's 2. Notable places cluster far more thickly within walking distance, and 19% of the land around it is protected against 6%.

Where they are alike

Both are inland cities with the same shape of year: January is the coolest month in each and July the warmest, and both dry out almost completely at the height of summer, under 10mm.

Swimming is not a reason to pick either: neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more, and Cordoba has no beach at all. Both also work for families, with tourist attractions near the centre in similar numbers.

Which traveller are you?

Someone travelling for food and late nights should take Madrid: many times as many restaurants near the centre, a far wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs, most of them central.

Families are better served in Madrid, which has 3 theme parks within reach where Cordoba has none, and about twice the park space near the centre. Cordoba answers with a similar count of attractions in a much smaller area.

A walker who wants heat and a short list of things to see will prefer Cordoba, with 2984 sunshine hours and highs reaching 37°C, though museums and day trips are thinner.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figures here carry no information: the price level is national, so it is identical for both by construction, and the €122 a day beside it is one country-wide estimate rather than a measurement of either city. Nothing in this data says which of the two costs more.

The weather picture hides a trap: the driest months in both are the hottest, and Cordoba's rainless midsummer comes with 37°C. Its milder winters bring the year's heaviest rain, over 90mm at the turn of the year.

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
Cordoba
15
17
21
24
28
33
37
37
32
26
19
16
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Rainfall, mm
Cordoba
57
53
63
54
43
11
1
7
37
79
79
91
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Cordoba
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Cordoba
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cordoba: 1991-2020 normals, Cordoba / Aeropuerto (7.6 km from centre). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Cordoba is at its best in April and May, when highs run 24-28°C and rain thins to 43mm. It stays warm into October, but that is when the rain returns, near 79mm. Midsummer highs of 37°C are dry but punishing.

Madrid is the better pick in June and September, with highs of 27-29°C and only 20-24mm of rain. It is also the drier of the two through winter, though the days are colder.

Getting there

Flying fromCordobaMadrid
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 35 m
€111-178
1 stop
SVQ · 111 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€99-133
1 stop
SVQ · 111 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 35 m
no fares
SVQ · 111 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 35 m
no fares
SVQ · 111 km
1 h 20 m
€56-238
MAD · 14 km
TenerifeTFS, TFN
2 h 20 m
€126-171
SVQ · 111 km
2 h 50 m
€109-153
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 35 m
no fares
SVQ · 111 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
Las PalmasLPA
2 h 15 m
no fares
SVQ · 111 km
2 h 45 m
€77-197
MAD · 14 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 5 m
€36-67
SVQ · 111 km
1 h 15 m
€40-87
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 137 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
DohaDOH
7 h 5 m
no fares
AGP · 137 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
MAD · 14 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

MeasureCordobaMadrid
Official languageSpanishSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation120 m663 m
Main airportCórdoba Airport (ODB)8 km from centre3 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureCordobaMadrid
City population323,2623,506,730
People per km²2585,801
Museums within 10 km1688
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km24
Distinct cuisines in the centre27106

Where else could you go?

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