The Best Travel Destinations for Single People Looking for Love

You land alone in late April, leave your bag at the hotel and walk into a street where strangers are handing each other roses, and nobody finds it odd that you came by yourself. A handful of cities stage that scene on a fixed date each year, or offer opportunities to meet people every night of the week, and a single visitor who books around those dates arrives in a crowd where conversation comes naturally.

Lisbon During the Santo António Festival

Lisbon spends most of June celebrating its popular saints, and Saint Anthony, whose feast falls on 13 June, is treated locally as a matchmaker. On the night of 12 June, the old neighbourhoods of Alfama and Mouraria fill with street parties and grilled sardines, and the Marchas Populares parade down Avenida da Liberdade. Small pots of basil called manjericos are sold everywhere and given as love tokens, each with a paper carnation and a short verse.

The city council also pays for a group wedding. In 2024, 16 couples were chosen from 37 applications, aged between 24 and 48, and were married on 12 June, some at Lisbon Cathedral and some in civil ceremonies at the city hall. The tradition stopped in 1974 and the council revived it in 1997. That week, talking to strangers at a long outdoor table is the normal way to spend an evening in Lisbon.

Barcelona on Sant Jordi

Catalonia's version of Valentine's Day falls on 23 April. The custom is to give a rose and a book. The rose comes from the legend of Saint George, who killed a dragon outside a Catalan town, and a rose bush is said to have grown where the dragon's blood fell. On the day itself, the streets of Barcelona fill with stalls selling both. Before the 2024 holiday, the region's florists expected about 7 million roses to be sold across Catalonia, many of them imported from Colombia and Ecuador. The city set up a record 435 stalls along La Rambla and other streets, and booksellers across Catalonia had sold about 1.87 million books on the same day the year before.

Sant Jordi is a working day in Catalonia. People browse the stalls in their lunch break and after work while authors sign books in the open air. A new book in hand gives two strangers something to talk about, making the celebration a natural setting for single travelers to meet people.

Buenos Aires Tango and Milongas

Tango was added to the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage in 2009, in a joint submission by Argentina and Uruguay, and Buenos Aires still dances it most nights of the week. The social dances, called milongas, run late and pair strangers as a matter of routine, in venues that range from old dance halls such as Salón Canning in Palermo to La Catedral, a converted warehouse in Almagro. The invitation is usually made by eye contact across the room, a custom called the cabeceo, and a nod in reply means yes.

Classes for beginners are held in the early evening before many milongas open, so a newcomer can learn the basic steps and then stay for the dance. A regular partner from those classes is often the first person a visitor gets to know in the city, and some of those pairings continue off the dance floor. For some visitors, the goal is a holiday romance. Others arrive with sugar dating while traveling in mind, or hope to meet someone they will keep seeing after the flight home.

Verona's Juliet Club

Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet in Verona, and the city has built a tourist trade around the story. Visitors queue to stand under the balcony at the Casa di Giulietta, and many leave letters addressed to Juliet herself. Those letters are answered. A group of volunteers known as the Juliet Club reads and replies to each one, and in 2021 its president, Giovanna Tamassia, said the club was receiving more than 10,000 letters a year, handled by about 15 permanent secretaries and a rotating group of volunteers from abroad. The city gives the club a stipend to keep the work going.

Many of the letters describe heartbreak, according to the volunteers who answer them. Verona is small enough to see on foot in a day or two, and its Roman arena hosts an opera season through the summer. For solo visitors, walking tours and cultural events offer opportunities to meet other travelers while exploring the city's romantic history.

Rome's Trevi Fountain

The legend in Rome is that one coin thrown into the Trevi Fountain means you will return to the city, a second coin brings a new romance, and a third leads to marriage. Enough visitors believe it to make the fountain a small source of income for charity. Workers from the city utility Acea sweep up the coins from the fountain, and Caritas, the Catholic charity, dries and counts them. Caritas collected about €1.4 million from the fountain in 2022 and reported a record of about €1.6 million for 2023, spent on food and other help for people in need in the city.

The fountain attracts visitors throughout the day. The streets around it lead to the Spanish Steps and the Pantheon, and the bars in the surrounding blocks fill with other travelers who have thrown their own coins. For someone exploring Rome alone, a small group walking tour or an evening at a neighbourhood café can offer a more natural opportunity for conversation than the crowded fountain itself.

Paris and the Pont des Arts

In Paris, the city's romantic image turned into a structural problem in 2015. Couples had spent years attaching padlocks to the railings of the Pont des Arts and throwing the keys into the Seine. In June 2014, part of the railing gave way under the weight, and city officials later said some panels had been holding nearly 500 kg, more than 4 times the load they were built for. A year later, the city removed more than 1 million locks, which, together with those from a neighbouring bridge, weighed about 45 tonnes, and it replaced the railings with glass panels.

On warm evenings, the quays along the Seine fill with locals and visitors, and the wine bars nearby are an easier place to start a conversation than a crowded bridge. For single travelers, spending an evening at a neighbourhood café or joining a small group activity offers a chance to meet people beyond the usual sightseeing crowds.

10,000 Letters a Year

Several of these dates are fixed. Sant Jordi falls on 23 April every year and the Lisbon weddings on 12 June, so both fit into the same spring, with Verona's opera season starting soon after. The most telling figure comes from Verona. More than 10,000 people a year were reported to be writing to a fictional woman for advice about love, and volunteers there answered their letters. For a traveler arriving alone, the festivals, dances and shared traditions offer something more immediate: a reason to start a conversation with someone new.