VacationSelector

Rome or Thessaloniki?

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 good for families and sights concentration with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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.

RomeThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Thessaloniki leads by 22 points.22
RomeThessaloniki
Score3355
Swim season months55
Beaches 10 km34
Coast distance24 km0 km
Water distance24 km0 km
Places to eat. Rome leads by 10 points.10
RomeThessaloniki
Score6050
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,241640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1015
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 35 points.35
RomeThessaloniki
Score8449
Museums within 10 km16134
Museums within 2 km of centre7922
Share of museums within 2 km %4965
Unesco sites within 50 km71
Nightlife. Rome leads by 7 points.7
RomeThessaloniki
Score7467
Drinking venues within 4 km2,0221,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre912805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4557
Nightclubs within 4 km8561
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 5 points.5
RomeThessaloniki
Score7065
Protected land share 50 km %1925
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7883
Park area within 2 km172 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 45 points.45
RomeThessaloniki
Score8641
Tourist attractions within 2 km12616
Park area within 2 km172 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 43 points.43
RomeThessaloniki
Score9956
Notable places within 2 km1,12598
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 6 points.6
RomeThessaloniki
Score6874
Price level global64.955.8
Daily budget€155€125
Year-round weather. Thessaloniki leads by 1 points.1
RomeThessaloniki
Score7172
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 31.4 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall21 mm to 114 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months39
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
4
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRomeThessaloniki
AthensATH
1 h 55 m
€96-116
FCO · 23 km
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
2 h 50 m
€98-154
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
1 h 30 m
€145-191
FCO · 23 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 15 m
€136-291
FCO · 23 km
1 h 15 m
€151-156
SKG · 14 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 50 m
€96-147
FCO · 23 km
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€66-127
FCO · 23 km
1 h 50 m
€125-175
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 15 m
€84-118
FCO · 23 km
2 h 10 m
€129-217
SKG · 14 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 20 m
€115-179
FCO · 23 km
2 h 20 m
€208-315
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasureRomeThessaloniki
Official languageItalianGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation21 m6 m
Main airportRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureRomeThessaloniki
City population2,748,109309,617
People per km²2,13516,042
Museums within 10 km17731
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km71
Distinct cuisines in the centre6545
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 Thessaloniki 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.