VacationSelector

Bologna or Bruges?

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

Your match

Bologna
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

Bruges
44
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and good for families 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.

BolognaBruges
Beaches & swimming. Bruges leads by 8 points.8
BolognaBruges
Score08
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km21
Coast distance74 km14 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 1 points.1
BolognaBruges
Score5857
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822443
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2032
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 10 points.10
BolognaBruges
Score6757
Museums within 10 km5830
Museums within 2 km of centre4324
Share of museums within 2 km %7480
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 19 points.19
BolognaBruges
Score5334
Drinking venues within 4 km720292
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531233
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7480
Nightclubs within 4 km308
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 13 points.13
BolognaBruges
Score3926
Protected land share 50 km %72
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10065
Park area within 2 km119 hectares59 hectares
Good for families. Bruges leads by 5 points.5
BolognaBruges
Score5560
Tourist attractions within 2 km3252
Park area within 2 km119 hectares59 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 20 points.20
BolognaBruges
Score6040
Notable places within 2 km12040
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 8 points.8
BolognaBruges
Score6860
Price level global64.976.2
Daily budget€155€180
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 11 points.11
BolognaBruges
Score6756
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C6.4 °C to 22 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm35 mm to 79 mm
Dry months51
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
Bruges
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Bruges
7
6
7
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Bruges
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Bruges
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Bruges
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2

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). Bruges: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (37.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaBruges
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 94 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 94 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 94 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 20 m
€85-160
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 94 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€220-255
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 94 km
CasablancaCMN
3 h 5 m
€180-238
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
LIL · 72 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBolognaBruges
Official languageItalianFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m2 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsBrussels Airport (BRU)94 km from centre191 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaBruges
City population387,971118,509
People per km²2,754840
Museums within 10 km6638
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre6251
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 Bruges 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. 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.