VacationSelector

Bologna or Boston?

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

Your match

Bologna
52
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Boston
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

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

BolognaBoston
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 60 points.60
BolognaBoston
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km268
Coast distance74 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Boston leads by 15 points.15
BolognaBoston
Score5873
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8221,452
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2032
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 24 points.24
BolognaBoston
Score6743
Museums within 10 km5879
Museums within 2 km of centre4327
Share of museums within 2 km %7434
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Boston leads by 5 points.5
BolognaBoston
Score5358
Drinking venues within 4 km720886
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531513
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7458
Nightclubs within 4 km3043
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 14 points.14
BolognaBoston
Score3953
Protected land share 50 km %712
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10077
Park area within 2 km119 hectares116 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 2 points.2
BolognaBoston
Score5553
Tourist attractions within 2 km3228
Park area within 2 km119 hectares116 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 2 points.2
BolognaBoston
Score6058
Notable places within 2 km120111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 25 points.25
BolognaBoston
Score6843
Price level global64.9100
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 11 points.11
BolognaBoston
Score6756
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C2.9 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm79 mm to 107 mm
Dry months50
0255075100

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
Bologna
7
10
15
19
24
29
32
32
26
19
13
8
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bologna: 1991-2020 normals, Bologna / Borgo Panigale (5.5 km from centre). Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaBoston
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
7 h 35 m
€481-586
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
7 h 5 m
€570
BOS · 4 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 45 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
CancunCUN
11 h 10 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 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 2026-09, 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

MeasureBolognaBoston
Official languageItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation54 m43 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaBoston
City population387,971675,647
People per km²2,7542,910
Museums within 10 km6651
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre6274
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bologna or Boston 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.