VacationSelector

Istanbul or Palermo?

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

Your match

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

Palermo
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

IstanbulPalermo
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 24 points.24
IstanbulPalermo
Score4367
Swim season months35
Beaches 10 km213
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 20 points.20
IstanbulPalermo
Score7050
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2013
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 16 points.16
IstanbulPalermo
Score6650
Museums within 10 km14532
Museums within 2 km of centre7126
Share of museums within 2 km %4981
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 26 points.26
IstanbulPalermo
Score7953
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5264
Nightclubs within 4 km22116
Nature & day trips. Palermo leads by 11 points.11
IstanbulPalermo
Score2536
Protected land share 50 km %14
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4845
Park area within 2 km60 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 26 points.26
IstanbulPalermo
Score6741
Tourist attractions within 2 km6816
Park area within 2 km60 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 18 points.18
IstanbulPalermo
Score7557
Notable places within 2 km285104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulPalermo
Score8968
Price level global35.264.9
Daily budget€100€155
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 8 points.8
IstanbulPalermo
Score6977
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months47
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
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
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. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulPalermo
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 40 m
€142-153
1 stop
IST · 36 km
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
NaplesNAP
2 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 0 m
€42-84
PMO · 25 km
BolognaBLQ
2 h 25 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 30 m
€28-65
PMO · 25 km
TurinTRN
2 h 45 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 45 m
€53-76
PMO · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
3 h 15 m
€179-269
IST · 36 km
1 h 50 m
€49-107
PMO · 25 km
VeniceVCE, TSF
2 h 20 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 40 m
€29-53
PMO · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
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 2026-08 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

MeasureIstanbulPalermo
Official languageTurkishItalian
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation100 m14 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulPalermo
City population15,655,924630,167
People per km²2,9303,924
Museums within 10 km7242
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre6233
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Istanbul 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). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.