Valentine’s day: A look at the world's most romantic cities

As the world celebrates Valentine’s day on February 14, the shopping platform Wethrift ranked the most romantic cities around the world, with London as the first romantic city worldwide.

According to Wethrift, “nothing gets the heart racing and the butterflies fluttering quite like a trip to a romantic retreat.”

The platform composed a list of the most romantic cities around the world based on eight-point criteria, including the number of couple-friendly activities in each city, the number of romantic restaurants, hotels, spas, sights, and landmarks. Additionally, the ranking also includes how often each city’s sunset has been captured on Instagram and has been hashtagged.

London, the UK, ranked first worldwide with a 76.5 score, as the city contains 1909 romantic restaurants, 279 nature and parks, with quick access to places like the beach, florists. The city also offers 1053 couple-friendly activities, 288 romantic hotels, 856 spas and wellness centers, 1156 sights and landmarks, 75,498 sunsets used by hashtags, and a total of 154,622,888 Instagram posts.

Paris, France ranked second with a score of 76.3, as the city is home to 551 romantic hotels, 952 spas and wellness centers, 1,515 romantic restaurants, 2,358 sights and landmarks, 594 couple-friendly activities, and 32,181 sunset hashtags used.

Barcelona placed third worldwide with a score of 66.1, as the Spanish city totals 785 romantic restaurants, 149 romantic hotels, 604 spas and wellness centers, 134 nature and parks, 588 couple-friendly activities, 794 sights and landmarks, and 65,480,351 sunset hashtags used.

Tokyo ranked 4th (65.7), ahead of New York City 5th (65.3), Rome ranked 6th (65.1), Istanbul placed 7th (63.5), Moscow 7th (60), Dubai 8th (58.2), Madrid 9th (53.7), and Prague 10th (55.5), according to the Wethrift ranking.

Wethrift’s ranking for the most romantic cities worldwide was based on the eight-point criteria, using TripAdvisor, Alltrails, Google Maps, and Instagram.