VacationSelector

Palermo or Shanghai?

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.

Shanghai
54
match

Wins on good for families and value for money 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.

PalermoShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 50 points.50
PalermoShanghai
Score6717
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km130
Coast distance1 km18 km
Water distance1 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Palermo leads by 5 points.5
PalermoShanghai
Score5045
Museums within 10 km32108
Museums within 2 km of centre2628
Share of museums within 2 km %8126
Unesco sites within 50 km10
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Shanghai leads by 6 points.6
PalermoShanghai
Score3642
Protected land share 50 km %49
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4582
Park area within 2 km63 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 40 points.40
PalermoShanghai
Score4181
Tourist attractions within 2 km1686
Park area within 2 km63 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km010
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 6 points.6
PalermoShanghai
Score5751
Notable places within 2 km10473
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 11 points.11
PalermoShanghai
Score6879
Price level global64.949
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 12 points.12
PalermoShanghai
Score7765
Monthly daytime high12.6 °C to 27.8 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall4 mm to 71 mm43 mm to 216 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
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
5
4
Shanghai
4
4
5
5
6
4
6
6
5
5
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPalermoShanghai
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
VeniceVCE, TSF
1 h 40 m
€29-53
PMO · 25 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 50 m
€49-107
PMO · 25 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 15 m
€183-194
PMO · 25 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 55 m
€161-283
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
11 h 20 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
MunichMUC
2 h 0 m
€175-215
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 5 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 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

MeasurePalermoShanghai
Official languageItalianPutonghua
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation14 m4 m
Main airportFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasurePalermoShanghai
City population630,16724,870,895
People per km²3,9243,922
Museums within 10 km4244
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre3364
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 Palermo or Shanghai 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.