Bologna or Cannes?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.
Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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 Bologna if you want a city trip: more museums, more to see on foot from the centre, and far more places to eat and drink, with late spring the strongest window.
Choose Cannes if the sea is the point: 68 beaches nearby against Bologna's 2, warm swimming through high summer and milder winters if you travel out of season.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Cannes leads by 73 points.73
| Bologna | Cannes | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 73 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 2 | 68 |
| Coast distance | 74 km | 1 km |
| Water distance | — | 1 km |
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 8 points.8
| Bologna | Cannes | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 58 | 50 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 822 | 473 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 20 | 19 |
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 31 points.31
| Bologna | Cannes | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 67 | 36 |
| Museums within 10 km | 58 | 31 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 43 | 5 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 74 | 16 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 3 | 2 |
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 25 points.25
| Bologna | Cannes | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 53 | 28 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 720 | 188 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 531 | 164 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 74 | 87 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 30 | 19 |
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
| Bologna | Cannes | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 39 | 33 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 7 | 17 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 1 | 16 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 53 |
| Park area within 2 km | 119 hectares | 13 hectares |
Good for families. Bologna leads by 30 points.30
| Bologna | Cannes | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 25 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 32 | 7 |
| Park area within 2 km | 119 hectares | 13 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 3 |
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 4 points.4
| Bologna | Cannes | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 56 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 120 | 95 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
| Bologna | Cannes | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 62 |
| Price level global | 64.9 | 73.7 |
| Daily budget | €155 | €160 |
Year-round weather. Cannes leads by 7 points.7
| Bologna | Cannes | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 67 | 74 |
| Monthly daytime high | 7 °C to 31.5 °C | 13.3 °C to 27.9 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 34 mm to 75 mm | 13 mm to 138 mm |
| Dry months | 5 | 3 |
Where they differ
Bologna has about twice as many museums as Cannes, and they sit tightly around the centre, with 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, one more than Cannes. For families it also has many times as many attractions and park space near the centre, and there is more within walking distance overall.
Cannes has 68 beaches nearby where Bologna has 2, with sea reaching 25°C at its warmest and staying above 21°C for four months. It also has 3 theme parks within reach, where Bologna has none.
Where they are alike
Both pack their notable places into a walkable centre; Bologna has somewhat more of them, but in each case a stay near the middle puts most of the sightseeing within walking distance.
Both also sit in the same broad national price bracket, with estimates of €155 in Italy and €160 in France. Day trips out of town are the weaker side for both, and both offer a similar range of kitchens.
Which traveller are you?
Museum-minded travellers should take Bologna: roughly twice the museums of Cannes, clustered close to the centre, 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and about three times as many places to drink when the galleries close.
Anyone planning the trip around swimming should take Cannes: 68 beaches nearby against Bologna's 2, and sea warm enough for four months of the year. Bologna has no real equivalent.
Families are better served in Bologna, which has many times as many attractions and park space near the centre; Cannes answers mainly with 3 theme parks within reach and the beaches themselves.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €155 and €160, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of Bologna or Cannes. A heavily visited coastal town can sit well above its country's average, and that distance can exceed the gap between the two national figures, so treat them as country context only.
Cannes's beach strength lands in the same weeks as its warmest sea and driest weather, so high summer is also when the coast is fullest. Bologna's year-round weather averages a wide swing, 7-32°C across the year, so no single month looks like the annual picture.
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.
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). Cannes: 1991-2020 normals, Nice (18 km from centre).
Bologna is at its best in May and June, when highs run 24-29°C and rain is light. Late summer stays warm, but autumn turns wet, with 75mm a month, and winter days are cold enough to keep you indoors.
Cannes peaks in July and August: highs of 28°C, sea at 24-25°C and just 13-18mm of rain, the driest stretch of its year. Autumn reverses that, with 138mm in November, though its winters stay mild.
Getting there
| Flying from | Bologna | Cannes |
|---|---|---|
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 40 m €158-262 1 stop BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 30 m €78-111 NCE · 20 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 2 h 0 m €114-267 BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 55 m €76-223 NCE · 20 km |
| BarcelonaBCN | 1 h 40 m €42-75 BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 15 m €83-135 NCE · 20 km |
| CataniaCTA | 1 h 40 m €41-45 BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 55 m no fares MRS · 146 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 25 m €154-191 1 stop BLQ · 6 km | 2 h 45 m €202-329 NCE · 20 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 0 m no fares BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 10 m €69-133 NCE · 20 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 50 m no fares BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 50 m €170-248 NCE · 20 km |
| TiranaTIA | 1 h 35 m €96-199 BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 55 m no fares NCE · 20 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 5 h 55 m no fares BLQ · 6 km | 6 h 20 m €375-433 NCE · 20 km |
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 8 h 30 m €637-650 VCE · 138 km | 8 h 10 m €666-799 1 stop NCE · 20 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
| Measure | Bologna | Cannes |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Italian | French |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CFL230 V, 50 Hz | CE230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 54 m | 0 m |
| Main airport | Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinations | Nice-Côte d'Azur Airport (NCE)20 km from centre129 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 11 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Bologna | Cannes |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 387,971 | 74,350 |
| People per km² | 2,754 | 3,793 |
| Museums within 10 km | 66 | 16 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 3 | 2 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 62 | 38 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | – | 4 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bologna or Cannes somewhere new.