VacationSelector

Rome or Shanghai?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Shanghai
54
match

Wins on value for money 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.

RomeShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Rome leads by 16 points.16
RomeShanghai
Score3317
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km30
Coast distance24 km18 km
Water distance24 km18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 39 points.39
RomeShanghai
Score8445
Museums within 10 km161108
Museums within 2 km of centre7928
Share of museums within 2 km %4926
Unesco sites within 50 km70
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 28 points.28
RomeShanghai
Score7042
Protected land share 50 km %199
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7882
Park area within 2 km172 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 5 points.5
RomeShanghai
Score8681
Tourist attractions within 2 km12686
Park area within 2 km172 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km410
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 48 points.48
RomeShanghai
Score9951
Notable places within 2 km1,12573
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 11 points.11
RomeShanghai
Score6879
Price level global64.949
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 6 points.6
RomeShanghai
Score7165
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 31.4 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall21 mm to 114 mm43 mm to 216 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
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
4
Shanghai
4
4
5
5
6
4
6
6
5
5
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRomeShanghai
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
11 h 30 m
€528-630
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
ChengduTFU, CTU
10 h 5 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
2 h 35 m
€216-247
PVG · 33 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 20 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
2 h 45 m
€326-382
PVG · 33 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 15 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 45 m
€270-340
FCO · 23 km
8 h 15 m
€508-557
1 stop
PVG · 33 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
13 h 45 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
23 h 45 m
€1,545-1873
2 stops
PVG · 33 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

MeasureRomeShanghai
Official languageItalianPutonghua
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation21 m4 m
Main airportRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureRomeShanghai
City population2,748,10924,870,895
People per km²2,1353,922
Museums within 10 km17744
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km70
Distinct cuisines in the centre6564
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 Rome or Shanghai 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.