VacationSelector

Istanbul or Rome?

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

Your match

Istanbul
65
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

IstanbulRome
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 10 points.10
IstanbulRome
Score4333
Swim season months35
Beaches 10 km23
Coast distance0 km24 km
Water distance0 km24 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 10 points.10
IstanbulRome
Score7060
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,0862,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2010
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 18 points.18
IstanbulRome
Score6684
Museums within 10 km145161
Museums within 2 km of centre7179
Share of museums within 2 km %4949
Unesco sites within 50 km17
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 5 points.5
IstanbulRome
Score7974
Drinking venues within 4 km2,2662,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5245
Nightclubs within 4 km22185
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 45 points.45
IstanbulRome
Score2570
Protected land share 50 km %119
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4878
Park area within 2 km60 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 19 points.19
IstanbulRome
Score6786
Tourist attractions within 2 km68126
Park area within 2 km60 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 24 points.24
IstanbulRome
Score7599
Notable places within 2 km2851,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulRome
Score8968
Price level global35.264.9
Daily budget€100€155
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 2 points.2
IstanbulRome
Score6971
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm21 mm to 114 mm
Dry months43
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
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
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). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulRome
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
3 h 15 m
€179-269
IST · 36 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
MadridMAD
3 h 50 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
CataniaCTA
2 h 10 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 20 m
€60-112
FCO · 23 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
5 h 45 m
€270-340
FCO · 23 km
PalermoPMO
2 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 10 m
€38-50
FCO · 23 km
TashkentTAS
4 h 35 m
€285-352
IST · 36 km
6 h 10 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
13 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
11 h 45 m
€893-1016
1 stop
FCO · 23 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

MeasureIstanbulRome
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 m21 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulRome
City population15,655,9242,748,109
People per km²2,9302,135
Museums within 10 km72177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km17
Distinct cuisines in the centre6265
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 Rome 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.