VacationSelector

Bologna or Edinburgh?

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 year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Edinburgh
✓ Best match
58
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.

BolognaEdinburgh
Beaches & swimming. Edinburgh leads by 55 points.55
BolognaEdinburgh
Score055
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km220
Coast distance74 km3 km
Water distance3 km
Places to eat. Edinburgh leads by 12 points.12
BolognaEdinburgh
Score5870
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8221,023
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2035
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 10 points.10
BolognaEdinburgh
Score6757
Museums within 10 km5830
Museums within 2 km of centre4322
Share of museums within 2 km %7473
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Edinburgh leads by 11 points.11
BolognaEdinburgh
Score5364
Drinking venues within 4 km7201,193
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531884
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7474
Nightclubs within 4 km3065
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 4 points.4
BolognaEdinburgh
Score3935
Protected land share 50 km %72
Landscape blanket share 50 km %11
Land share of disc %10085
Park area within 2 km119 hectares166 hectares
Good for families. Edinburgh leads by 17 points.17
BolognaEdinburgh
Score5572
Tourist attractions within 2 km3287
Park area within 2 km119 hectares166 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Bologna and Edinburgh are level on 60.
BolognaEdinburgh
Score6060
Notable places within 2 km120126
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 14 points.14
BolognaEdinburgh
Score6854
Price level global64.984.9
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 16 points.16
BolognaEdinburgh
Score6751
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C6.6 °C to 18.8 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm43 mm to 80 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
Edinburgh
7
7
9
12
14
17
19
19
17
13
9
7
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Edinburgh
7
6
6
7
10
12
14
14
13
12
10
8
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Edinburgh
62
47
47
43
49
63
65
69
55
80
68
63
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Edinburgh
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Edinburgh
2
3
4
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
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). Edinburgh: 1991-2020 normals, Edinburgh Airport (10 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaEdinburgh
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 20 m
€41-45
EDI · 11 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 40 m
€78-108
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 40 m
€58-103
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
4 h 0 m
€201-242
1 stop
EDI · 11 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
€96-199
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 10 m
no fares
PSA · 118 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
EDI · 11 km
CancunCUN
11 h 10 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
GLA · 78 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

MeasureBolognaEdinburgh
Official languageItalianEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Pound Sterling (GBP)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 999
Elevation54 m47 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsEdinburgh Airport (EDI)11 km from centre158 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaEdinburgh
City population387,971488,050
People per km²2,7541,884
Museums within 10 km6632
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre6278
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 Edinburgh 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.