athens.taipei The Atlas of City Experiences
The Anti-Awards

24 rankings. Every one is the true extreme of a real measurement — there is no worst city, only cities magnificently bad at one specific thing.

All 24 rankings →
The weather6
The Sauna You Can’t LeaveThe Bedroom That Never CoolsThe Umbrella EconomyRain, By The MetreSixteen Thousand DaysThe Year Without a Window
The hours it keeps6
The Cinderella ClauseThe Early Bedtime AwardThe Sunday Ghost TownThe Breakfast DesertThe Great Lunch VanishingThe Part-Time City
Getting out5
The Great Escape IndexHardest City to Leave (In a Hurry)The Domestic BubbleThe Hibernating AirportThe Perth Meridian
The ground and the sky4
The Wobbliest GroundThe Volcano PartyThe Volcano Next DoorThe 3 p.m. Sunset Club
Everything else3
The Monoculture MenuThe Calendar of ExcusesA Gigabyte of Cats
Tools

Three ways to interrogate the atlas rather than read it.

Open the comparer →
Compare two cities Head-to-head on absurd terms only. No GDP, no cappuccino index. The year, month by month Where to be in each month, who has the most days off, and when the airports peak. Start from a goal Eat well at 2 a.m. · Work all day from a café — ranked by what the city keeps open.
How this is made

Every figure on this site states where it came from and what it cannot tell you.

Read the method →
Method & principles What we measure, what we refuse to guess, and why rhythm is never a claim about people. Sources Every corpus behind the atlas, with its licence. Books coming soon The long-form city profiles and the method book. Contact · request a city Tell us what the atlas is missing.
The index

126 cities across the atlas, by region — or browse the full A–Z.

Every city, A–Z →
Southern Europe21
RomeMilanBarcelonaMadridAthensLisbon
Western Europe20
LondonParisLuxembourgViennaAmsterdamDublin
North America & Caribbean18
New YorkMiamiAustinSan FranciscoLos AngelesSeattle
CEE & Balkans16
PragueBudapestWarsawBelgradeBucharestKraków
East Asia12
TokyoOsakaFukuokaSeoulBusanTaipei
South & Southeast Asia11
SingaporeBangkokKuala LumpurChiang MaiDa NangGeorge Town
🇬🇧 United Kingdom · metro 86k · 813 venues mapped

Hemel Hempstead

Where Hemel Hempstead places among 1,878 cities measured on the one thing that needs no editing — the hours the city keeps. Its strongest showing is shops open on sunday, where it ranks 33 of 1,704.

Nearest city 🇬🇧 St Albans 8 km Nearest written profile 🇬🇧 London 📖 35 km

Typical weather

1981–present
JFMAMJJASOND
coldcool warmhot ▢ outlined = best time to visit
JFMAMJJASOND
Best time to visit Jul, Aug — mild (15–26 °C mean) and not wet months.

City Rhythm

measured

Opening hours, by kind of place

median across mapped venues
Food & drink813 places mapped
09:00–22:00
0006121824
7%
open past midnight
91%
open on Sundays
80h
open per week
7%
take a midday break
11%
open 24/7
Shops & errands330 places mapped
07:00–22:00
0006121824
2%
open past midnight
97%
open on Sundays
90h
open per week
9%
open 24/7
Services95 places mapped
09:00–17:30
0006121824
0%
open past midnight
15%
open on Sundays
46h
open per week

Vital absurdities

measured
0
muggy days a year
0
nights/yr the bedroom never cools
140
umbrella days a year
32 m
of rain since 1981
48
days over 30 °C, of 16,630
0
volcanoes within 100 km
540.4 km
to West Eifel Volcanic Field
0
quakes felt per decade (M4.5+, 100 km)
15:54
winter sunset (solar approx.)
16.7 h
longest day of the year
6
public holidays, 2024
14,502
km adrift · the Remote Index

The ranks

floor: 200 mapped venues
MeasureHemel Hempstead RankNearest company
Kitchens open past midnight% of food & drink 7.3% 227 of 1,878 🇯🇵 Tsukuba 7.4%🇩🇪 Ulm 7.4%🇺🇸 Ames 7.3%🇫🇷 Creil 7.3%Hemel Hempstead🇩🇪 Karlsruhe 7.3%🇺🇦 Khmelnytskyi 7.3%🇹🇭 Khon Kaen 7.3%🇺🇸 Norwalk 7.3%
Hours open per weekmedian, food & drink 80 h 97 of 1,878 🇺🇸 Tallahassee 80.5 h🇵🇹 Amora 80 h🇺🇸 Annapolis 80 h🇨🇳 Chengdu 80 hHemel Hempstead🇺🇸 New York City 80 h🇺🇸 Traverse City 80 h🇵🇱 Zakopane 80 h🇺🇸 Atlanta 79.8 h
Open before 8 a.m.% of food & drink 24.8% 229 of 1,878 🇮🇩 Surakarta 25%🇲🇽 Tepic 25%🇬🇷 Volos 25%🇮🇹 Bologna 24.9%Hemel Hempstead🇬🇧 Liverpool 24.8%🇪🇸 Sant Boi de Llobregat 24.8%🇺🇸 Spokane Valley 24.8%🇨🇦 Kamloops 24.7%
Vanish at lunch% taking a midday break 7.3% 311 of 1,878 🇰🇷 Cheongju-si 7.4%🇩🇪 Rostock 7.4%🇦🇷 Santa Fe 7.4%🇬🇧 Exeter 7.3%Hemel Hempstead🇱🇦 Vientiane 7.3%🇬🇧 Aldershot 7.2%🇺🇸 Charlottesville 7.2%🇦🇺 Adelaide 7.1%
Never close at all% open 24/7 11% 121 of 1,878 🇮🇩 Semarang 11.1%🇮🇩 Seririt 11.1%🇷🇺 Zhukovsky 11.1%🇺🇸 Blue Springs 11%Hemel Hempstead🇯🇵 Nagoya 11%🇨🇦 Vaudreuil-Dorion 11%🇵🇭 Agoo 10.9%🇷🇺 Kazan 10.9%
Shops open on Sunday% of retail 96.6% 33 of 1,704 🇦🇱 Tirana 96.7%🇷🇺 Vladivostok 96.7%🇬🇧 Dunfermline 96.6%🇺🇸 Durham 96.6%Hemel Hempstead🇺🇸 Lake Ronkonkoma 96.6%🇺🇸 Lincoln 96.6%🇺🇸 Medford 96.6%🇬🇧 Peterborough 96.6%

The same questions are asked of the 126 cities with a written profile, where each one gets its method and its full standings: kitchens open past midnight, hours open per week, open before 8 a.m., vanish at lunch, shops open on sunday.

← All 1,878 ranked cities