VacationSelector

Rome or Seoul?

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.

Seoul
63
match

Wins on places to eat 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.

RomeSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Rome leads by 18 points.18
RomeSeoul
Score3315
Swim season months52
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance24 km28 km
Water distance24 km28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 25 points.25
RomeSeoul
Score6085
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,2413,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1032
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 1 points.1
RomeSeoul
Score8483
Museums within 10 km161203
Museums within 2 km of centre7990
Share of museums within 2 km %4944
Unesco sites within 50 km75
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 6 points.6
RomeSeoul
Score7480
Drinking venues within 4 km2,0223,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre9121,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4550
Nightclubs within 4 km8529
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 38 points.38
RomeSeoul
Score7032
Protected land share 50 km %191
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7895
Park area within 2 km172 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 7 points.7
RomeSeoul
Score8679
Tourist attractions within 2 km12662
Park area within 2 km172 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km48
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 40 points.40
RomeSeoul
Score9959
Notable places within 2 km1,125118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 4 points.4
RomeSeoul
Score6872
Price level global64.959.4
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 10 points.10
RomeSeoul
Score7161
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 31.4 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall21 mm to 114 mm18 mm to 422 mm
Dry months34
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
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
4
Seoul
5
5
6
7
7
6
4
5
6
7
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRomeSeoul
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 20 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
11 h 5 m
€603-659
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
11 h 55 m
€680-750
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
12 h 25 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
13 h 45 m
€770-823
ICN · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 15 m
€136-291
FCO · 23 km
10 h 0 m
€493-591
ICN · 49 km
Hong KongHKG
11 h 35 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
3 h 5 m
€172-189
ICN · 49 km
Abu DhabiAUH
5 h 45 m
€280-355
2 stops
FCO · 23 km
8 h 45 m
€591-679
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
12 h 40 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
14 h 55 m
€1,052-1072
2 stops
ICN · 49 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

MeasureRomeSeoul
Official languageItalianKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Won (KRW)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation21 m38 m
Main airportRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureRomeSeoul
City population2,748,1099,668,465
People per km²2,13515,973
Museums within 10 km17780
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km75
Distinct cuisines in the centre65156
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Rome or Seoul 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.