VacationSelector

Rome or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Rome
✓ Best match
72
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on places to eat and beaches & swimming 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.

RomeRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 4 points.4
RomeRotterdam
Score3337
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km322
Coast distance24 km24 km
Water distance24 km24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 12 points.12
RomeRotterdam
Score6072
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,241862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1046
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 24 points.24
RomeRotterdam
Score8460
Museums within 10 km16141
Museums within 2 km of centre7920
Share of museums within 2 km %4949
Unesco sites within 50 km75
Nightlife. Rome leads by 25 points.25
RomeRotterdam
Score7449
Drinking venues within 4 km2,022542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre912378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4570
Nightclubs within 4 km8540
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 28 points.28
RomeRotterdam
Score7042
Protected land share 50 km %1910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7879
Park area within 2 km172 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 24 points.24
RomeRotterdam
Score8662
Tourist attractions within 2 km12627
Park area within 2 km172 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km48
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 48 points.48
RomeRotterdam
Score9951
Notable places within 2 km1,12574
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rome leads by 10 points.10
RomeRotterdam
Score6858
Price level global64.979.2
Daily budget€155€181
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 15 points.15
RomeRotterdam
Score7156
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 31.4 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall21 mm to 114 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months30
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
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
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. Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 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 fromRomeRotterdam
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
2 h 55 m
€118-198
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 45 m
€270-340
FCO · 23 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 30 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
CIA · 14 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 5 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 25 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
11 h 45 m
€893-1016
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
12 h 10 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

MeasureRomeRotterdam
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
Elevation21 m10 m
Main airportRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureRomeRotterdam
City population2,748,109664,311
People per km²2,1352,080
Museums within 10 km17740
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km75
Distinct cuisines in the centre6577
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 Rome 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.