VacationSelector

Palermo or Thessaloniki?

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

Your match

Palermo
55
match

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

Thessaloniki
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on nature & day trips and nightlife 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.

PalermoThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 12 points.12
PalermoThessaloniki
Score6755
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km134
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Palermo and Thessaloniki are level on 50.
PalermoThessaloniki
Score5050
Restaurants within 2 km of centre807640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1315
Museums & heritage. Palermo leads by 1 points.1
PalermoThessaloniki
Score5049
Museums within 10 km3234
Museums within 2 km of centre2622
Share of museums within 2 km %8165
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 14 points.14
PalermoThessaloniki
Score5367
Drinking venues within 4 km7991,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre515805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6457
Nightclubs within 4 km1661
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 29 points.29
PalermoThessaloniki
Score3665
Protected land share 50 km %425
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %4583
Park area within 2 km63 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Palermo and Thessaloniki are level on 41.
PalermoThessaloniki
Score4141
Tourist attractions within 2 km1616
Park area within 2 km63 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 1 points.1
PalermoThessaloniki
Score5756
Notable places within 2 km10498
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 6 points.6
PalermoThessaloniki
Score6874
Price level global64.955.8
Daily budget€155€125
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 5 points.5
PalermoThessaloniki
Score7772
Monthly daytime high12.6 °C to 27.8 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall4 mm to 71 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months79
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
5
4
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromPalermoThessaloniki
AthensATH
1 h 45 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€129-217
SKG · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
1 h 45 m
€117-203
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
2 h 0 m
€175-215
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 15 m
€101-154
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
NaplesNAP
1 h 0 m
€42-84
PMO · 25 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
2 h 30 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
2 h 40 m
€127-199
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 0 m
€114-166
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
1 h 50 m
€125-175
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€151-346
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
2 h 20 m
€208-315
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasurePalermoThessaloniki
Official languageItalianGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation14 m6 m
Main airportFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasurePalermoThessaloniki
City population630,167309,617
People per km²3,92416,042
Museums within 10 km4231
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre3345
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 Thessaloniki 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.