VacationSelector

Riga or Rome?

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

Your match

Riga
53
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on good for families and sights concentration 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.

RigaRome
Beaches & swimming. Riga leads by 7 points.7
RigaRome
Score4033
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km573
Coast distance12 km24 km
Water distance12 km24 km
Places to eat. Rome leads by 1 points.1
RigaRome
Score5960
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4702,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3310
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 23 points.23
RigaRome
Score6184
Museums within 10 km69161
Museums within 2 km of centre4779
Share of museums within 2 km %6849
Unesco sites within 50 km17
Nightlife. Rome leads by 23 points.23
RigaRome
Score5174
Drinking venues within 4 km5842,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre456912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7845
Nightclubs within 4 km5485
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 26 points.26
RigaRome
Score4470
Protected land share 50 km %1019
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7378
Park area within 2 km68 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 51 points.51
RigaRome
Score3586
Tourist attractions within 2 km7126
Park area within 2 km68 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 37 points.37
RigaRome
Score6299
Notable places within 2 km1371,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 8 points.8
RigaRome
Score7668
Price level global53.764.9
Daily budget€132€155
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 19 points.19
RigaRome
Score5271
Monthly daytime high-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 87 mm21 mm to 114 mm
Dry months33
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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Riga
No sunshine record
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. Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRigaRome
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
3 h 25 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
HelsinkiHEL
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 50 m
€96-147
FCO · 23 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 15 m
€136-291
FCO · 23 km
MadridMAD
3 h 50 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
CataniaCTA
3 h 20 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
1 h 20 m
€60-112
FCO · 23 km
TashkentTAS
4 h 55 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
6 h 10 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
Sharm el SheikhSSH
4 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 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 2026-08 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

MeasureRigaRome
Official languageLatvianItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m21 m
Main airportRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureRigaRome
City population588,9112,748,109
People per km²2,135
Museums within 10 km12177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km17
Distinct cuisines in the centre5565
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Riga 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. 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. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.