Palermo or Venice?
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, 2 points apart
Wins on nature & day trips and nightlife with your weighting.
Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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 Venice if your trip is built around museums and monuments within walking distance of one another: it has about twice as many museums as Palermo, and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Palermo's 1.
Choose Palermo if you want warm sea a short way from the centre, dry high summer, and bars and clubs with real choice at night.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Venice leads by 2 points.2
| Palermo | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 67 | 69 |
| Swim season months | 5 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 13 | 20 |
| Coast distance | 1 km | 4 km |
| Water distance | 1 km | 4 km |
Places to eat. Palermo leads by 5 points.5
| Palermo | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 50 | 45 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 807 | 750 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 13 | 10 |
Museums & heritage. Venice leads by 22 points.22
| Palermo | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 50 | 72 |
| Museums within 10 km | 32 | 57 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 26 | 45 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 81 | 79 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 1 | 5 |
Nightlife. Palermo leads by 18 points.18
| Palermo | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 53 | 35 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 799 | 342 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 515 | 306 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 64 | 89 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 16 | 3 |
Nature & day trips. Palermo leads by 19 points.19
| Palermo | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 36 | 17 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 4 | 4 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 45 | 70 |
| Park area within 2 km | 63 hectares | 15 hectares |
Good for families. Venice leads by 16 points.16
| Palermo | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 41 | 57 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 16 | 72 |
| Park area within 2 km | 63 hectares | 15 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 3 |
Sights concentration. Venice leads by 26 points.26
| Palermo | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 57 | 83 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 104 | 464 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Palermo and Venice are level on 68.
| Palermo | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 68 |
| Price level global | 64.9 | 64.9 |
| Daily budget | €155 | €155 |
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 11 points.11
| Palermo | Venice | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 77 | 66 |
| Monthly daytime high | 12.6 °C to 27.8 °C | 8 °C to 30.4 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 4 mm to 71 mm | 36 mm to 106 mm |
| Dry months | 7 | 2 |
Where they differ
Palermo is the better base for evenings out, with roughly twice as many places to drink as Venice and many times as many nightclubs, most of them near the centre. It also has far more park space within reach of the centre, though the land around either city is only 4% protected.
Venice concentrates many more notable places within walking distance of its centre, and about twice as many museums as Palermo. It also has 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Palermo's 1.
Where they are alike
Both put swimming within reach of a short trip: the sea is 1km from Palermo's centre and 4km from Venice's, each has a fair spread of beaches nearby, and both are at their warmest for bathing in August.
They are also close on eating out, with a similar number of restaurants near the centre, Palermo carrying a somewhat wider range of kitchens. In neither case would the food alone decide the trip.
Which traveller are you?
A traveller who wants museums and monuments on foot should take Venice: a deeper museum offering, many more notable places within walking distance of the centre, and 5 UNESCO-listed sites within day-trip reach.
Families lean to Venice too, with many more tourist attractions near the centre and 3 theme parks within reach where Palermo has none. Palermo's counter is park space, if you want children outdoors rather than queuing.
Anyone planning around swimming and evenings out should pick Palermo: the sea is 1km from the centre and warm enough for 5 months against Venice's 4, and the bar and club choice is much wider.
What the numbers don't tell you
The value comparison between these two carries no information. It is a national price level, identical for both by construction, and the €155 daily budget beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either city. If cost decides the trip, price your own accommodation and travel.
The beach standing is close, but the two reach it differently: Venice has more beaches, while Palermo has warmer water for more of the year and only 1km from the centre. A single year-round weather reading also hides the ends of the range, with Venice at 30°C in summer and 8°C in midwinter.
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.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre). Venice: 1991-2020 normals, Treviso / S. Angelo (26.1 km from centre).
Palermo's window is the longer one: June to September brings highs of 24-28°C, sea of 22-27°C and almost no rain at the height of summer, and the water stays warm into October.
Venice peaks from May to July at 24-30°C, but it is wetter throughout, with 91-106mm in the wettest spring and autumn months, so a warm month there is not a dry one. January highs of 8°C make winter a poor bet.
Getting there
| Flying from | Palermo | Venice |
|---|---|---|
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 10 m €40-52 PMO · 25 km | 1 h 10 m €81-119 VCE · 7 km |
| MilanMXP, BGY, LIN | 1 h 45 m €31-110 PMO · 25 km | 1 h 5 m no fares TRS · 98 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 2 h 25 m €101-135 PMO · 25 km | 1 h 40 m €68-109 VCE · 7 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 50 m no fares PMO · 25 km | 2 h 0 m €46-119 1 stop VCE · 7 km |
| NaplesNAP | 1 h 0 m €42-84 PMO · 25 km | 1 h 20 m €81 VCE · 7 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 1 h 50 m €49-107 PMO · 25 km | 1 h 45 m €41-56 VCE · 7 km |
| MadridMAD | 2 h 25 m €92-140 1 stop PMO · 25 km | 2 h 20 m €102-159 VCE · 7 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 15 m €183-194 PMO · 25 km | 2 h 20 m €148-150 VCE · 7 km |
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 9 h 5 m no fares PMO · 25 km | 8 h 30 m €637-650 VCE · 7 km |
| Tel Aviv YafoTLV | 3 h 10 m €151-346 1 stop PMO · 25 km | 3 h 40 m €289-462 1 stop VRN · 113 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
| Measure | Palermo | Venice |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Italian | Italian |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CFL230 V, 50 Hz | CFL230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 14 m | 2 m |
| Main airport | Falcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations | Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE)7 km from centre98 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 13 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Palermo | Venice |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 630,167 | 250,369 |
| People per km² | 3,924 | 602 |
| Museums within 10 km | 42 | 52 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 1 | 5 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 33 | 46 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 5 months | 4 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Palermo or Venice somewhere new.