VacationSelector

Bologna or Chicago?

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.

Chicago
✓ Best match
56
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.

BolognaChicago
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
BolognaChicago
Score053
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km212
Coast distance74 km10,000 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 23 points.23
BolognaChicago
Score5881
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8222,147
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2037
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 21 points.21
BolognaChicago
Score6746
Museums within 10 km5845
Museums within 2 km of centre4320
Share of museums within 2 km %7444
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 9 points.9
BolognaChicago
Score5362
Drinking venues within 4 km7201,123
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531728
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7465
Nightclubs within 4 km3051
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 1 points.1
BolognaChicago
Score3938
Protected land share 50 km %76
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Bologna and Chicago are level on 55.
BolognaChicago
Score5555
Tourist attractions within 2 km3218
Park area within 2 km119 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 10 points.10
BolognaChicago
Score6070
Notable places within 2 km120217
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 25 points.25
BolognaChicago
Score6843
Price level global64.9100
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 10 points.10
BolognaChicago
Score6757
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C0.2 °C to 29.4 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm54 mm to 121 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
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Chicago
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
Chicago
No sunshine record

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). Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaChicago
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 55 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 45 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
CancunCUN
11 h 10 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 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

MeasureBolognaChicago
Official languageItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation54 m179 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaChicago
City population387,9712,746,388
People per km²2,7544,529
Museums within 10 km6643
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6287
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

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