VacationSelector

Palermo or Rotterdam?

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

Palermo
55
match

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

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on places to eat 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.

Scoreboard

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

PalermoRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 30 points.30
PalermoRotterdam
Score6737
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km1322
Coast distance1 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 22 points.22
PalermoRotterdam
Score5072
Restaurants within 2 km of centre807862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1346
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 10 points.10
PalermoRotterdam
Score5060
Museums within 10 km3241
Museums within 2 km of centre2620
Share of museums within 2 km %8149
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Palermo leads by 4 points.4
PalermoRotterdam
Score5349
Drinking venues within 4 km799542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre515378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6470
Nightclubs within 4 km1640
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 6 points.6
PalermoRotterdam
Score3642
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4579
Park area within 2 km63 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 21 points.21
PalermoRotterdam
Score4162
Tourist attractions within 2 km1627
Park area within 2 km63 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km08
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 6 points.6
PalermoRotterdam
Score5751
Notable places within 2 km10474
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Palermo leads by 10 points.10
PalermoRotterdam
Score6858
Price level global64.979.2
Daily budget€155€181
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 21 points.21
PalermoRotterdam
Score7756
Monthly daytime high12.6 °C to 27.8 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall4 mm to 71 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months70
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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
5
4
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPalermoRotterdam
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€224-269
1 stop
RTM · 5 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RTM · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€92-140
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
3 h 20 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 55 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
3 h 5 m
no fares
TPS · 80 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 5 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 30 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€151-346
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
AMS · 47 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

MeasurePalermoRotterdam
Official languageItalianDutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation14 m10 m
Main airportFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasurePalermoRotterdam
City population630,167664,311
People per km²3,9242,080
Museums within 10 km4240
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre3377
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Palermo or Rotterdam 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.