VacationSelector

Monaco or Rome?

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

Your match

Monaco
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Rome
✓ Best match
72
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.

The verdict

Choose Monaco if swimming is the point of the trip: the sea starts at the centre, with 50 beaches close by, and July and August are hot and dry.

Choose Rome if you want museums, evenings out and things to do with children. It is the far larger city, with much more within walking distance of the centre and a wider spread of usable months.

Scoreboard

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

MonacoRome
Beaches & swimming. Monaco leads by 40 points.40
MonacoRome
Score7333
Swim season months45
Beaches 10 km503
Coast distance0 km24 km
Water distance0 km24 km
Places to eat. Rome leads by 21 points.21
MonacoRome
Score3960
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2692,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1610
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 46 points.46
MonacoRome
Score3884
Museums within 10 km23161
Museums within 2 km of centre879
Share of museums within 2 km %3549
Unesco sites within 50 km27
Nightlife. Rome leads by 66 points.66
MonacoRome
Score874
Drinking venues within 4 km692,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre63912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %9145
Nightclubs within 4 km785
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 17 points.17
MonacoRome
Score5370
Protected land share 50 km %2419
Landscape blanket share 50 km %170
Land share of disc %5478
Park area within 2 km15 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 51 points.51
MonacoRome
Score3586
Tourist attractions within 2 km14126
Park area within 2 km15 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km34
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 35 points.35
MonacoRome
Score6499
Notable places within 2 km1541,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for moneyNo source publishes a price level for Monaco.
Year-round weather. Monaco leads by 3 points.3
MonacoRome
Score7471
Monthly daytime high13.3 °C to 27.9 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall13 mm to 138 mm21 mm to 114 mm
Dry months33
0255075100

Where they differ

Monaco is the swimming trip. The sea is 0km from the centre against 24km in Rome, and there are 50 beaches nearby against Rome's 3. Its restaurants also cover a wider range of kitchens.

Rome has many times as many places to drink and to dance, and about half of them sit near the centre, so nights out are not confined to one quarter. It also has many times as many museums, 7 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Monaco's 2, and many times as many attractions and park space for children.

Where they are alike

The weather is close all year. Rome runs a little warmer, 12-31°C against Monaco's 13-28°C, and both get a dry stretch in summer, at 40mm or less.

Both also have countryside within reach and enough choice at table. Protected land covers 24% of the area around Monaco and 19% around Rome, so day trips into open country work from either. Rome has far more restaurants, Monaco a broader mix of kitchens, and neither leaves you short.

Which traveller are you?

If the swim decides it, take Monaco. The sea is 0km from the centre and 50 beaches sit close by, and the place is compact enough to cross on foot between dips.

If you are there for museums and evenings out, take Rome. It has many times as many museums, 7 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and far more bars and clubs, about half near the centre.

Families are better served in Rome: many times as many attractions and far more park space near the centre, plus 4 theme parks within reach against Monaco's 3.

What the numbers don't tell you

Rome's day-to-day costs are recorded in this data, at €155 a day. Monaco's are not recorded at all, so the two cannot be compared on cost here, and the value ranking rests on a different measure that both cities do have.

Monaco's beach lead is real but narrow: 50 beaches are packed into a very small territory, and the water is warmest in exactly the two months that draw the heaviest crowds. Rome has a longer warm-sea season over the year, but its coast is 24km from the centre, so swimming there is a day out rather than a walk.

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
Monaco
13
14
15
17
21
25
28
28
25
21
17
14
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Monaco
14
13
14
15
18
21
24
25
22
20
17
15
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Monaco
74
53
51
69
42
34
13
18
84
124
138
91
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Monaco
9
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
Monaco
5
6
7
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
5
5
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. Monaco: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (19.9 km from centre). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Monaco peaks in July and August: highs of 28°C, sea at 25°C and only 13-18mm of rain. Its autumn is the wetter of the two, at 124-138mm a month.

Rome spreads its good months wider. May and June are warm and drying out, and September still reaches 27°C, though 70mm of rain returns. Midsummer highs of 31°C make a walking city hard work, so spring and early autumn suit it best.

Getting there

Flying fromMonacoRome
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 55 m
€76-223
NCE · 18 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€78-111
NCE · 18 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
€137-165
NCE · 18 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€666-799
1 stop
NCE · 18 km
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 45 m
€80-177
1 stop
GOA · 136 km
1 h 20 m
€60-112
FCO · 23 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€202-329
NCE · 18 km
2 h 15 m
€136-291
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€83-135
NCE · 18 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 40 m
€155-228
1 stop
NCE · 18 km
2 h 5 m
€94-137
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 35 m
no fares
NCE · 18 km
1 h 10 m
€38-50
FCO · 23 km
TunisTUN
1 h 35 m
€148-281
NCE · 18 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
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

MeasureMonacoRome
Official languageFrenchItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCEF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation68 m21 m
Main airportNice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)18 km from centre129 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureMonacoRome
City population38,8572,748,109
People per km²18,5032,135
Museums within 10 km14177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km27
Distinct cuisines in the centre2965
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 Monaco 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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). 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). Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under 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. 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.