VacationSelector

Annecy or Bologna?

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

Your match

Annecy
34
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Bologna
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

The verdict

Choose Annecy if the trip is built around water and open country: lake beaches, protected land within reach, and summer highs of 24-27°C rather than real heat.

Choose Bologna if you want the city itself: many times as many museums, bars and notable buildings, nearly all of them walkable from the centre, and warm, usable weather in May and September.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AnnecyBologna
Beaches & swimming. Annecy and Bologna are level on 0.
AnnecyBologna
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km92
Coast distance260 km74 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 12 points.12
AnnecyBologna
Score4658
Restaurants within 2 km of centre343822
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2020
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 37 points.37
AnnecyBologna
Score3067
Museums within 10 km958
Museums within 2 km of centre543
Share of museums within 2 km %5674
Unesco sites within 50 km23
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 33 points.33
AnnecyBologna
Score2053
Drinking venues within 4 km140720
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre120531
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8674
Nightclubs within 4 km630
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 3 points.3
AnnecyBologna
Score3639
Protected land share 50 km %207
Landscape blanket share 50 km %191
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km48 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 26 points.26
AnnecyBologna
Score2955
Tourist attractions within 2 km432
Park area within 2 km48 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km30
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 37 points.37
AnnecyBologna
Score2360
Notable places within 2 km15120
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
AnnecyBologna
Score6268
Price level global73.764.9
Daily budget€160€155
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 8 points.8
AnnecyBologna
Score5967
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C7 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 mm34 mm to 75 mm
Dry months05
0255075100

Where they differ

Annecy is the outdoor half of the pair. 20% of the land around it is protected against 7% around Bologna, it has 9 beaches to Bologna's 2, and 3 theme parks within reach where Bologna has none.

Bologna is the denser city: many times as many museums, set tightly around the centre, and many times as many notable buildings within walking distance. Evenings are wider too, with many times as many bars and clubs, and about twice as many restaurants near the centre.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination. Annecy has 9 beaches nearby and Bologna 2, but neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more, so water is an occasional afternoon rather than the reason to go.

Day trips work out similarly, if differently: open protected country around Annecy, roughly twice as much park space near Bologna's centre. The two national daily budgets are also close, €160 for France against €155 for Italy.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling for museums and old streets should take Bologna: many times as many museums as Annecy, clustered around the centre, plus 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Annecy's 2.

Walkers and swimmers are better served by Annecy, where 20% of the surrounding land is protected against 7% around Bologna, and 9 beaches sit close enough for a warm afternoon.

Families divide by age. Annecy has 3 theme parks within reach and shallow water for small children; Bologna answers with many times as many attractions near the centre and about twice as much park space.

What the numbers don't tell you

A warm month and a comfortable one are not the same. Bologna's driest stretch is July and August, but that is also when highs reach 32°C. Annecy stays cooler yet has no dry month. The beaches near Annecy are lake water, and neither city has a month of sea at 21°C or more.

The daily budget is a national estimate, the price level for restaurants and hotels in France and Italy, not a measurement of either city. The two figures sit close, but a visited city can sit well above or below its country's average, so neither reads as the cheaper trip.

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
Annecy
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Bologna
7
10
15
19
24
29
32
32
26
19
13
8
Rainfall, mm
Annecy
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Daylight, hours per day
Annecy
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Annecy
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Annecy: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (39 km from centre). Bologna: 1991-2020 normals, Bologna / Borgo Panigale (5.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Annecy is the high-summer choice, June to August, with highs of 24-27°C where Bologna reaches 29-32°C. The trade is rain: 77-81mm through those months, and no month of the year is dry.

Bologna suits May and September better, 24°C and 26°C, with whole days usable outdoors, though September rain climbs to 75mm. Its own summer is the driest part of the year, 34-40mm, but 32°C is a lot of heat to walk in.

Getting there

Flying fromAnnecyBologna
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 38 km
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 38 km
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 38 km
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€147-338
GVA · 38 km
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
CataniaCTA
2 h 5 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 38 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 38 km
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 38 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
VCE · 138 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

MeasureAnnecyBologna
Official languageFrenchItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation418 m54 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)38 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAnnecyBologna
City population132,117387,971
People per km²1,9752,754
Museums within 10 km166
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km23
Distinct cuisines in the centre4462

Where else could you go?

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