VacationSelector

Naples or Rome?

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

Your match

Naples
63
match

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

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on good for families 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.

The verdict

Choose Naples if you want to swim without leaving the city: the sea is 1km from the centre, beaches are plentiful, and the old core is compact enough to cover on foot.

Choose Rome if the trip is about museums, attractions and eating out, if you are travelling with children, or if you want protected countryside and day trips within reach.

Scoreboard

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

NaplesRome
Beaches & swimming. Naples leads by 43 points.43
NaplesRome
Score7633
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km293
Coast distance1 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. Rome leads by 14 points.14
NaplesRome
Score4660
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,2442,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km710
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 6 points.6
NaplesRome
Score7884
Museums within 10 km84161
Museums within 2 km of centre6879
Share of museums within 2 km %8149
Unesco sites within 50 km57
Nightlife. Rome leads by 8 points.8
NaplesRome
Score6674
Drinking venues within 4 km1,3892,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre964912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6945
Nightclubs within 4 km4085
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 33 points.33
NaplesRome
Score3770
Protected land share 50 km %719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5678
Park area within 2 km41 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 45 points.45
NaplesRome
Score4186
Tourist attractions within 2 km11126
Park area within 2 km41 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km34
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 21 points.21
NaplesRome
Score7899
Notable places within 2 km3511,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Naples and Rome are level on 68.
NaplesRome
Score6868
Price level global64.964.9
Daily budget€155€155
Year-round weather. Naples leads by 2 points.2
NaplesRome
Score7371
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 31.4 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall17 mm to 159 mm21 mm to 114 mm
Dry months33
0255075100

Where they differ

Naples puts swimming within reach of a city break: the sea is 1km from the centre against 24km in Rome, and there are 29 beaches nearby against Rome's 3.

Rome is the stronger choice with children: many more tourist attractions near the centre, far more park space to break up a day, and 4 theme parks within reach against Naples's 3. Green country is easier to reach too, with 19% of the land around Rome protected against 7% around Naples.

Where they are alike

Weather is nearly identical: both peak at 31°C in high summer, both sit near 13°C at the coldest, and both get three months with 40mm of rain or less, so the booking season is the same.

Both carry more heritage than a short trip can absorb, with UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach of each. Nights out are comparable too: bars and clubs in both, and in Naples they sit close to the centre, so less travel between them.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Rome. Far more attractions and park space sit near the centre, and there are 4 theme parks within reach against Naples's 3, which makes filling a week easier.

Wanting to swim: Naples. The sea is 1km from the centre rather than 24km, and there are 29 beaches nearby rather than a handful, so a morning swim is realistic.

Eating and going out: Rome, with about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a wider range of kitchens. Naples answers with bars and clubs that are almost all walkable from the centre.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure is a national price level applied to both cities, identical by construction, so the value comparison between these two carries no information about which costs less. The €155 daily budget beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either place.

Naples's beach advantage peaks exactly when the coast is busiest: the sea is warmest in August, the same month daytime highs reach 31°C. And the steady weather picture hides autumn, when warm days arrive with the heaviest rain of the year in both cities, so a shoulder-season trip is not reliably a dry one.

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
Naples
13
14
16
19
24
28
31
31
28
23
18
14
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Naples
15
14
14
16
19
23
25
26
24
22
19
17
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Naples
89
69
82
73
54
29
17
18
78
92
159
108
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Naples
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Naples
4
5
6
7
8
9
11
10
8
6
4
4
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. Naples: 1991-2020 normals, Grazzanise (28.3 km from centre). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Naples peaks from June to September, when the sea holds 23-26°C and midsummer is dry. November's 159mm makes late autumn the one to skip.

Rome spreads its season wider. Spring arrives drier, with 57mm in March against Naples's 82mm, and September still reaches 27°C, so a city-focused trip travels better in spring or early autumn. Autumn rain is heavy in both, though Rome's wettest month is 114mm against Naples's higher peak.

Getting there

Flying fromNaplesRome
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 30 m
€35-109
NAP · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€84-118
FCO · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 10 m
€108-170
NAP · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 35 m
€90-167
1 stop
NAP · 7 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 5 m
€36-65
NAP · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€60-112
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 50 m
€103-165
1 stop
NAP · 7 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
no fares
NAP · 7 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 0 m
€39-94
NAP · 7 km
1 h 10 m
€38-50
FCO · 23 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 5 m
€167-197
1 stop
NAP · 7 km
2 h 15 m
€136-291
FCO · 23 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 0 m
no fares
NAP · 7 km
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
Sharm el SheikhSSH
3 h 25 m
no fares
NAP · 7 km
3 h 40 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 2026-09 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

MeasureNaplesRome
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
Elevation17 m21 m
Main airportNaples International Airport (NAP)7 km from centre131 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureNaplesRome
City population913,4622,748,109
People per km²7,6762,135
Museums within 10 km65177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km57
Distinct cuisines in the centre3165
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Naples 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). 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.