VacationSelector

Bologna or Cologne?

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.

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

BolognaCologne
Beaches & swimming. Bologna and Cologne are level on 0.
BolognaCologne
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km240
Coast distance74 km256 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 14 points.14
BolognaCologne
Score5872
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8221,142
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2035
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 7 points.7
BolognaCologne
Score6760
Museums within 10 km5847
Museums within 2 km of centre4327
Share of museums within 2 km %7457
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 11 points.11
BolognaCologne
Score5364
Drinking venues within 4 km7201,107
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531727
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7466
Nightclubs within 4 km3090
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 32 points.32
BolognaCologne
Score3971
Protected land share 50 km %753
Landscape blanket share 50 km %152
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 17 points.17
BolognaCologne
Score5572
Tourist attractions within 2 km3243
Park area within 2 km119 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km06
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 7 points.7
BolognaCologne
Score6053
Notable places within 2 km12081
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 8 points.8
BolognaCologne
Score6860
Price level global64.975.9
Daily budget€155€163
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 7 points.7
BolognaCologne
Score6760
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C6.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm48 mm to 81 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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1

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). Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaCologne
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 45 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 20 m
€85-160
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
€96-199
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 30 m
€83-129
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
CasablancaCMN
3 h 5 m
€180-238
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
DUS · 41 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

MeasureBolognaCologne
Official languageItalianGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m59 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaCologne
City population387,9711,024,621
People per km²2,7542,530
Museums within 10 km6640
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre6284

Where else could you go?

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