VacationSelector

Valletta or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Valletta
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on places to eat and sights concentration 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.

VallettaWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 59 points.59
VallettaWashington DC
Score7718
Swim season months63
Beaches 10 km221
Coast distance0 km34 km
Water distance0 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 19 points.19
VallettaWashington DC
Score5877
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4161,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3536
Museums & heritage. Valletta leads by 6 points.6
VallettaWashington DC
Score6155
Museums within 10 km4683
Museums within 2 km of centre2955
Share of museums within 2 km %6366
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 14 points.14
VallettaWashington DC
Score4761
Drinking venues within 4 km5221,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre250593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4858
Nightclubs within 4 km2754
Nature & day trips. Valletta leads by 4 points.4
VallettaWashington DC
Score4642
Protected land share 50 km %10
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %694
Park area within 2 km24 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Valletta leads by 8 points.8
VallettaWashington DC
Score4638
Tourist attractions within 2 km327
Park area within 2 km24 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 15 points.15
VallettaWashington DC
Score6176
Notable places within 2 km133305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valletta leads by 26 points.26
VallettaWashington DC
Score6943
Price level global62.8100
Daily budget€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 17 points.17
VallettaWashington DC
Score7962
Monthly daytime high15.7 °C to 31.9 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 90 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months60
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
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromVallettaWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MunichMUC
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 50 m
€83-115
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 15 m
€111-180
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 15 m
€177-222
MLA · 6 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
14 h 0 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 2026-09 to 2026-09, 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

MeasureVallettaWashington DC
Official languageEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation56 m72 m
Main airportMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureVallettaWashington DC
City population6,444689,545
People per km²8,0553,896
Museums within 10 km1599
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre5582
Swim season, months above 21 °C6 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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