VacationSelector

Bologna or Geneva?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Bologna
52
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Geneva
50
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

The verdict

Choose Bologna if museums and a walkable historic centre are the point of the trip, and if you want the warmer, drier stay: it has months at 40mm of rain or less, where Geneva has none.

Choose Geneva if you want green surroundings and easy days out of town, with 27% of the land around it protected, a wider range of kitchens and theme parks within reach for children.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

BolognaGeneva
Beaches & swimming. Bologna and Geneva are level on 0.
BolognaGeneva
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km243
Coast distance74 km279 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Geneva leads by 12 points.12
BolognaGeneva
Score5870
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8221,028
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2035
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 15 points.15
BolognaGeneva
Score6752
Museums within 10 km5835
Museums within 2 km of centre4320
Share of museums within 2 km %7457
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 3 points.3
BolognaGeneva
Score5350
Drinking venues within 4 km720549
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531427
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7478
Nightclubs within 4 km3060
Nature & day trips. Geneva leads by 20 points.20
BolognaGeneva
Score3959
Protected land share 50 km %727
Landscape blanket share 50 km %121
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares182 hectares
Good for families. Geneva leads by 10 points.10
BolognaGeneva
Score5565
Tourist attractions within 2 km3228
Park area within 2 km119 hectares182 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 4 points.4
BolognaGeneva
Score6056
Notable places within 2 km12099
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 33 points.33
BolognaGeneva
Score6835
Price level global64.9110.5
Daily budget€155€248
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 8 points.8
BolognaGeneva
Score6759
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C5.1 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm55 mm to 94 mm
Dry months50
0255075100

Where they differ

Bologna has about twice as many museums as Geneva, clustered tightly around the centre, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2. The daily budget estimate is €155 for Italy against €248 for Switzerland, national figures rather than city ones.

Geneva's setting is the greener one: 27% of the surrounding land is protected against 7% around Bologna, with more park space near the centre. Its restaurants span a much wider range of kitchens, and 2 theme parks lie within reach where Bologna has none.

Where they are alike

Neither works as a swimming trip: no month in either brings water to 21°C or more, so this is not an axis to decide on.

Both are compact, with their notable places within walking distance of the centre, Bologna holding somewhat more of them. Nightlife is similar in scale and equally central in each, Bologna leaning towards places to drink and Geneva towards clubs. Both are warmest in July and coolest in January.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller going for museums and old streets should pick Bologna: about twice as many museums as Geneva, tightly grouped around the centre, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

Families are better served in Geneva, which has 2 theme parks within reach where Bologna has none, plus more park space near the centre and a comparable spread of attractions.

Anyone who wants walking and open country outside the city should also choose Geneva, where 27% of the surrounding land is protected against 7% around Bologna, with a wider range of kitchens for the evenings.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figure is a national price level for restaurants and hotels, €155 for Italy and €248 for Switzerland, not a measurement of Bologna or Geneva. A heavily visited city can sit further from its own country's average than the two figures sit from each other, so use it only as a starting point.

Geneva's many nearby beaches look like a summer asset, but no month in either city brings water to 21°C or more, so that count says more about access than about swimming. And Bologna's driest months are also its hottest, while its warm September carries 75mm of rain.

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
Geneva
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
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). Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bologna's best window is May and June, with highs of 24-29°C and 37-50mm of rain. July is drier still at 34mm but hotter. September stays warm, though rain rises to 75mm.

Geneva is at its best from June to August at 24-27°C, though those months carry around 80mm of rain and no month of the year there is dry. Bologna's winter is the milder of the two, but both are cool and damp then, so neither is a strong cold-season choice.

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaGeneva
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 10 m
€104-203
GVA · 5 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 5 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 55 m
€147-338
GVA · 5 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 30 m
€160-186
GVA · 5 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 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

MeasureBolognaGeneva
Official languageItalianFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m403 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days9 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaGeneva
City population387,971209,061
People per km²2,75413,148
Museums within 10 km6635
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre6280

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bologna or Geneva 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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.