VacationSelector

Genoa or Istanbul?

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

Your match

Genoa
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families 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.

GenoaIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Genoa leads by 30 points.30
GenoaIstanbul
Score7343
Swim season months43
Beaches 10 km372
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 20 points.20
GenoaIstanbul
Score5070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6912,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1420
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 11 points.11
GenoaIstanbul
Score5566
Museums within 10 km47145
Museums within 2 km of centre3371
Share of museums within 2 km %7049
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
GenoaIstanbul
Score5079
Drinking venues within 4 km6372,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4191,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6652
Nightclubs within 4 km17221
Nature & day trips. Genoa leads by 10 points.10
GenoaIstanbul
Score3525
Protected land share 50 km %81
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6148
Park area within 2 km29 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 29 points.29
GenoaIstanbul
Score3867
Tourist attractions within 2 km2168
Park area within 2 km29 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 14 points.14
GenoaIstanbul
Score6175
Notable places within 2 km130285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 21 points.21
GenoaIstanbul
Score6889
Price level global64.935.2
Daily budget€155€100
Year-round weather. Genoa leads by 4 points.4
GenoaIstanbul
Score7369
Monthly daytime high11.7 °C to 27.9 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall12 mm to 122 mm23 mm to 101 mm
Dry months34
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
Genoa
12
12
15
18
21
25
27
28
25
20
16
13
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Genoa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Genoa
58
41
47
67
40
26
12
20
72
101
122
89
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Genoa
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Genoa
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
10
7
6
4
4
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Genoa: 1991-2020 normals, Genova / Sestri (6.7 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGenoaIstanbul
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 137 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 137 km
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
MadridMAD
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 137 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
AthensATH
2 h 25 m
€91-99
MXP · 137 km
1 h 20 m
€128-154
IST · 36 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 15 m
€67-76
LIN · 119 km
2 h 50 m
€137-196
IST · 36 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 5 m
no fares
MXP · 137 km
1 h 15 m
€54-87
SAW · 30 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
no fares
GOA · 7 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
DohaDOH
5 h 50 m
no fares
MXP · 137 km
3 h 55 m
€271-275
IST · 36 km
TashkentTAS
6 h 20 m
no fares
MXP · 137 km
4 h 35 m
€285-352
IST · 36 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
11 h 50 m
€1,114-1167
2 stops
MXP · 137 km
13 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 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

MeasureGenoaIstanbul
Official languageItalianTurkish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+3
Emergency number112112
Elevation20 m100 m
Main airportGenoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA)7 km from centre23 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenoaIstanbul
City population558,74515,655,924
People per km²2,3252,930
Museums within 10 km5172
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4162
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Genoa or Istanbul 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.