VacationSelector

Genoa 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, 1 point apart

Genoa
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Palermo
55
match

Wins on year-round weather and nightlife 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 Genoa if you want the sea at the edge of the centre and a real choice of beaches, with more museums and a denser walkable core to fall back on when you are not swimming.

Choose Palermo if dry, settled warmth matters more: far more months with little rain, a swimming season about a month longer, and more park space and places to drink near the centre.

Scoreboard

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

GenoaPalermo
Beaches & swimming. Genoa leads by 6 points.6
GenoaPalermo
Score7367
Swim season months45
Beaches 10 km3713
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Genoa and Palermo are level on 50.
GenoaPalermo
Score5050
Restaurants within 2 km of centre691807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1413
Museums & heritage. Genoa leads by 5 points.5
GenoaPalermo
Score5550
Museums within 10 km4732
Museums within 2 km of centre3326
Share of museums within 2 km %7081
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Palermo leads by 3 points.3
GenoaPalermo
Score5053
Drinking venues within 4 km637799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre419515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6664
Nightclubs within 4 km1716
Nature & day trips. Palermo leads by 1 points.1
GenoaPalermo
Score3536
Protected land share 50 km %84
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6145
Park area within 2 km29 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Palermo leads by 3 points.3
GenoaPalermo
Score3841
Tourist attractions within 2 km2116
Park area within 2 km29 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Genoa leads by 4 points.4
GenoaPalermo
Score6157
Notable places within 2 km130104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Genoa and Palermo are level on 68.
GenoaPalermo
Score6868
Price level global64.964.9
Daily budget€155€155
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 4 points.4
GenoaPalermo
Score7377
Monthly daytime high11.7 °C to 27.9 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall12 mm to 122 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months37
0255075100

Where they differ

Genoa puts the sea at the edge of its centre, 0km away, and has 37 beaches nearby against Palermo's 13. It also has more museums and more notable places within walking distance, so a day on foot covers more ground.

Palermo is the drier and steadier of the two: seven months at 40mm of rain or less against Genoa's three, and five months with the sea at 21°C or more against four. It also has more places to drink and about twice as much park space near the centre.

Where they are alike

Eating out is where the two sit level. Palermo has somewhat more restaurants near the centre, but the range of kitchens is much the same, so neither will feel narrow after a few days.

They are close on nature, nightlife and families too. Protected land is limited around both, 8% around Genoa and 4% around Palermo, and neither has a theme park within reach. Nightclub numbers are similar, and in both the drinking and dancing sits near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

A swimmer after variety should pick Genoa, where the water meets the centre and the choice of shore is much wider. If a longer season of warm water matters more than that choice, Palermo answers better.

Anyone travelling for museums and old buildings is better served in Genoa, which holds more of both and packs more of interest within walking distance, so a day on foot needs less planning.

Families and late-evening types will find Palermo the easier city: roughly double the green space near the middle and more places to drink, though neither city offers a theme park within reach.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information. That figure is a national price level and is identical for both by construction, and the €155 a day beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either city. Neither is the cheaper trip on this evidence.

A beach count is a count, not a promise of space: the months when Genoa's sea is warmest are the months everyone else swims, and 37 beaches near a city fill up. Genoa's autumn also reads better on temperature than in practice, with November at 122mm.

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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Genoa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Genoa
58
41
47
67
40
26
12
20
72
101
122
89
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Genoa
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Genoa
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
10
7
6
4
4
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. Genoa: 1991-2020 normals, Genova / Sestri (6.7 km from centre). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Genoa is at its best in July and August, with highs of 27-28°C, the sea at its warmest and little rain. Autumn is the weak spot: 101mm in October and more again in November, so a warm-looking month is not always a dry one.

Palermo carries the season further at both ends. Rain stays under 40mm from April right through September, and the sea is still 25°C in September, so the shoulder months are the steadier bet for swimming and for walking between them.

Getting there

Flying fromGenoaPalermo
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
no fares
GOA · 7 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
MadridMAD
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 137 km
2 h 25 m
€92-140
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 137 km
2 h 15 m
€183-194
PMO · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 137 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 35 m
€78-142
MXP · 137 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
NaplesNAP
1 h 20 m
no fares
GOA · 7 km
1 h 0 m
€42-84
PMO · 25 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 15 m
€67-76
LIN · 119 km
2 h 15 m
€101-154
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
AthensATH
2 h 25 m
€91-99
MXP · 137 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 25 m
€65-131
MXP · 137 km
2 h 0 m
€114-166
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 50 m
€119-204
MXP · 137 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

MeasureGenoaPalermo
Official languageItalianItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation20 m14 m
Main airportGenoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA)7 km from centre23 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenoaPalermo
City population558,745630,167
People per km²2,3253,924
Museums within 10 km5142
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4133
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Genoa 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. 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. 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.