VacationSelector

Rome or Washington DC?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on places to eat 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.

RomeWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Rome leads by 15 points.15
RomeWashington DC
Score3318
Swim season months53
Beaches 10 km31
Coast distance24 km34 km
Water distance24 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 17 points.17
RomeWashington DC
Score6077
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,2411,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1036
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 29 points.29
RomeWashington DC
Score8455
Museums within 10 km16183
Museums within 2 km of centre7955
Share of museums within 2 km %4966
Unesco sites within 50 km70
Nightlife. Rome leads by 13 points.13
RomeWashington DC
Score7461
Drinking venues within 4 km2,0221,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre912593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4558
Nightclubs within 4 km8554
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 28 points.28
RomeWashington DC
Score7042
Protected land share 50 km %1910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %7894
Park area within 2 km172 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 48 points.48
RomeWashington DC
Score8638
Tourist attractions within 2 km1267
Park area within 2 km172 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 23 points.23
RomeWashington DC
Score9976
Notable places within 2 km1,125305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rome leads by 25 points.25
RomeWashington DC
Score6843
Price level global64.9100
Daily budget€155—
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 9 points.9
RomeWashington DC
Score7162
Monthly daytime high12 °C to 31.4 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall21 mm to 114 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Washington DC
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
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRomeWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
9 h 0 m
€487-550
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
10 h 10 m
no fares
FCO · 23 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
Abu DhabiAUH
5 h 45 m
€280-355
2 stops
FCO · 23 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 15 m
€630-760
FCO · 23 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
11 h 45 m
€893-1016
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureRomeWashington DC
Official languageItalian–
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation21 m72 m
Main airportRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureRomeWashington DC
City population2,748,109689,545
People per km²2,1353,896
Museums within 10 km17799
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km70
Distinct cuisines in the centre6582
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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