VacationSelector

Thessaloniki or Valletta?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Thessaloniki
59
match

Wins on nightlife and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Valletta
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

ThessalonikiValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 22 points.22
ThessalonikiValletta
Score5577
Swim season months56
Beaches 10 km422
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Valletta leads by 8 points.8
ThessalonikiValletta
Score5058
Restaurants within 2 km of centre640416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1535
Museums & heritage. Valletta leads by 12 points.12
ThessalonikiValletta
Score4961
Museums within 10 km3446
Museums within 2 km of centre2229
Share of museums within 2 km %6563
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 20 points.20
ThessalonikiValletta
Score6747
Drinking venues within 4 km1,407522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre805250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5748
Nightclubs within 4 km6127
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 19 points.19
ThessalonikiValletta
Score6546
Protected land share 50 km %25
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %836
Park area within 2 km39 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Valletta leads by 5 points.5
ThessalonikiValletta
Score4146
Tourist attractions within 2 km1632
Park area within 2 km39 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Valletta leads by 5 points.5
ThessalonikiValletta
Score5661
Notable places within 2 km98133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 5 points.5
ThessalonikiValletta
Score7469
Price level global55.862.8
Daily budget€125€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 7 points.7
ThessalonikiValletta
Score7279
Monthly daytime high9.7 °C to 32.1 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall21 mm to 56 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months96
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromThessalonikiValletta
AthensATH
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
1 h 40 m
€66-166
MLA · 6 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€117-203
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 50 m
€125-175
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
2 h 15 m
€111-180
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 10 m
€129-217
SKG · 14 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 50 m
€98-154
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
ManchesterMAN
3 h 25 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 20 m
€208-315
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureThessalonikiValletta
Official languageGreekEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation6 m56 m
Main airportThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureThessalonikiValletta
City population309,6176,444
People per km²16,0428,055
Museums within 10 km3115
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre4555
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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