VacationSelector

Bled or Bologna?

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

Your match

Bled
28
match

Wins on value for money with your weighting.

Bologna
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage 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 Bled if the point of the trip is the lake and the country around it: a town of under 5,000 people, quiet once the light goes, with a large share of protected land within easy reach.

Choose Bologna if you want to eat widely, walk between museums and notable buildings in one compact centre, and still have somewhere to go in the evening.

Scoreboard

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

BledBologna
Beaches & swimming. Bled and Bologna are level on 0.
BledBologna
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km32
Coast distance76 km74 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 39 points.39
BledBologna
Score1958
Restaurants within 2 km of centre43822
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1320
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 40 points.40
BledBologna
Score2767
Museums within 10 km1658
Museums within 2 km of centre143
Share of museums within 2 km %674
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 51 points.51
BledBologna
Score253
Drinking venues within 4 km43720
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre36531
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8474
Nightclubs within 4 km130
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
BledBologna
Score3339
Protected land share 50 km %207
Landscape blanket share 50 km %21
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km9 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 38 points.38
BledBologna
Score1755
Tourist attractions within 2 km732
Park area within 2 km9 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 38 points.38
BledBologna
Score2260
Notable places within 2 km14120
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bled leads by 4 points.4
BledBologna
Score7268
Price level global59.664.9
Daily budget€131€155
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 10 points.10
BledBologna
Score5767
Monthly daytime high1.3 °C to 26.7 °C7 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall28 mm to 139 mm34 mm to 75 mm
Dry months25
0255075100

Where they differ

Bled's advantages lie outside the town. 20% of the surrounding land is protected against 7% around Bologna, and it has 1 theme park within reach where Bologna has none, which makes it the better base for days spent outdoors.

Bologna has many times as many restaurants near the centre and a far wider range of kitchens, about three times as many museums, clustered tightly around the middle, and many more notable buildings within walking distance. Its bars and clubs outnumber Bled's several times over.

Where they are alike

Swimming is a side note in both. Bled has 3 beaches nearby and Bologna 2, and neither has a month of sea at 21°C or more, so neither trip can be built around water.

Both also sit within day-trip reach of 3 UNESCO-listed places, and the two national daily budget estimates behind them are close together, so the choice is unlikely to turn on heritage excursions or on headline prices.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone building days around the lake and open country should take Bled: 20% of the surrounding land is protected, and the town stays quiet in the evening rather than offering an alternative to it.

Travellers who come for food and museums should take Bologna, which has many more restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, and roughly three times as many museums, most within a short walk of each other.

Families are better served in Bologna, with far more attractions and park space near the centre, though Bled holds the only theme park between the two and offers simpler, shorter days out.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €131 against €155, are national estimates for each city's country, covering restaurant and hotel price levels rather than anything measured in Bled or Bologna. A small, heavily visited lake town and a large regional city can each sit well away from their national average, so the gap between the two figures is no guide to which trip will cost more.

The months that rate best for Bled are also its wettest, at 139mm in August, so high summer buys warmth and rain together. Bologna's driest summer weeks come with highs of 32°C instead.

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
Bled
1
5
12
16
21
25
27
26
21
15
7
1
Bologna
7
10
15
19
24
29
32
32
26
19
13
8
Rainfall, mm
Bled
28
35
50
67
86
108
127
139
114
95
93
55
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Daylight, hours per day
Bled
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
Bled
3
5
6
6
8
8
8
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. Bled: 1991-2020 normals, Klagenfurt (35.5 km from centre). Bologna: 1991-2020 normals, Bologna / Borgo Panigale (5.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bled is at its best from June to September, when highs reach 25-27°C, but that is also its wettest stretch, rising to 139mm in August. Rain is heavy right through the warm season, and outside that window the town cools sharply.

Bologna's strongest months are May and June, with September close behind. Midsummer is hot, at 32°C, but dry, at 34-40mm, so heat rather than rain is the constraint; the wetter weather arrives in autumn instead.

Getting there

Flying fromBledBologna
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 10 m
no fares
TRS · 78 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 10 m
€188-190
LJU · 31 km
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
no fares
LJU · 31 km
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 45 m
no fares
TRS · 78 km
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 45 m
€139-178
1 stop
LJU · 31 km
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
LJU · 31 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
no fares
TRS · 78 km
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 30 m
no fares
TRS · 78 km
1 h 35 m
€96-199
BLQ · 6 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 40 m
no fares
TRS · 78 km
1 h 30 m
€83-129
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 45 m
€374-528
2 stops
LJU · 31 km
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 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

MeasureBledBologna
Official languageSloveneItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation501 m54 m
Main airportLjubljana Jože Pučnik Airport (LJU)31 km from centre28 non-stop destinationsBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year21 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBledBologna
City population4,969387,971
People per km²262,754
Museums within 10 km466
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre1762

Where else could you go?

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