VacationSelector

Bologna or Genoa?

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 good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Genoa
✓ Best match
56
match

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 the trip is about museums, eating and walking the centre: more museums than Genoa, three UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and a wider range of kitchens. It also suits a family better, with more attractions and park space close in.

Choose Genoa if you intend to swim: 37 beaches nearby and four months of sea warm enough for it, which Bologna has no equivalent of.

Scoreboard

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

BolognaGenoa
Beaches & swimming. Genoa leads by 73 points.73
BolognaGenoa
Score073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km237
Coast distance74 km0 km
Water distance—0 km
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 8 points.8
BolognaGenoa
Score5850
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2014
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 12 points.12
BolognaGenoa
Score6755
Museums within 10 km5847
Museums within 2 km of centre4333
Share of museums within 2 km %7470
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 3 points.3
BolognaGenoa
Score5350
Drinking venues within 4 km720637
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531419
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7466
Nightclubs within 4 km3017
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 4 points.4
BolognaGenoa
Score3935
Protected land share 50 km %78
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10061
Park area within 2 km119 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 17 points.17
BolognaGenoa
Score5538
Tourist attractions within 2 km3221
Park area within 2 km119 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Genoa leads by 1 points.1
BolognaGenoa
Score6061
Notable places within 2 km120130
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna and Genoa are level on 68.
BolognaGenoa
Score6868
Price level global64.964.9
Daily budget€155€155
Year-round weather. Genoa leads by 6 points.6
BolognaGenoa
Score6773
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C11.7 °C to 27.9 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm12 mm to 122 mm
Dry months53
0255075100

Where they differ

Bologna has somewhat more museums, and three UNESCO-listed places sit within day-trip reach against Genoa's one. It works better with children too: about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre, and many times as much park space. It also has somewhat more restaurants near the centre and a wider spread of kitchens.

Genoa answers with the coast: 37 beaches nearby against Bologna's two, and four months of sea at 21°C or more, where Bologna has none.

Where they are alike

Both put about the same number of notable places within walking distance of the centre, so in each the historic core can be covered on foot rather than by transport.

Nightlife is comparable in scale as well: roughly as many places to drink in each, and in both most of them sit near the centre. The countryside around them is protected to a similar degree, 8% of the land around Genoa and 7% around Bologna, so neither has a clear edge for days out.

Which traveller are you?

If the trip is planned around swimming, Genoa is the only option of the two: 37 beaches within reach and four months when the sea is warm enough, against next to nothing in Bologna.

Museum and restaurant travellers should take Bologna: somewhat more museums, three UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Genoa's one, and both more restaurants near the centre and a wider spread of kitchens.

Families will find more to do in Bologna, with about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre and far more park space to break up the day. Neither city has a theme park within reach.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figures are identical by construction: they reflect one national price level, so comparing these two on cost tells you nothing about which is cheaper. The €155 daily budget beside them is a national estimate rather than a measurement of either city.

Genoa's coast is a summer asset only: the sea is warm enough for four months, and those are the months everyone else travels. Autumn is wet there, past 100mm a month, so a shoulder-season trip loses the beaches without gaining settled weather. Bologna's summer runs hot in turn, up to 32°C.

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
Genoa
12
12
15
18
21
25
27
28
25
20
16
13
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Genoa
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Genoa
58
41
47
67
40
26
12
20
72
101
122
89
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Genoa
9
10
12
13
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
Genoa
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
10
7
6
4
4

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). Genoa: 1991-2020 normals, Genova / Sestri (6.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bologna is at its strongest in May and June, when highs reach 24-29°C and rain sits at 37-50mm. The warmth holds into September, though the autumn rain arrives with it, and winter is the weakest stretch.

Genoa is the better bet in July and August, when highs of 27-28°C come with only 12-20mm of rain and the sea reaches 24-25°C, the one swimming window of the two. Its autumn turns wet, with rainfall past 100mm a month, and its winters are milder than Bologna's.

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaGenoa
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 40 m
€140-309
MXP · 137 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 0 m
€63-91
MXP · 137 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
8 h 15 m
€542-635
1 stop
MXP · 137 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 45 m
€80-177
1 stop
GOA · 7 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 50 m
€220-255
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 35 m
€78-142
MXP · 137 km
AthensATH
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 25 m
€91-99
MXP · 137 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 15 m
€67-76
LIN · 119 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
6 h 10 m
€375-563
MXP · 137 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
10 h 10 m
€710-815
1 stop
MXP · 137 km
CancunCUN
11 h 10 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
MXP · 137 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

MeasureBolognaGenoa
Official languageItalianItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m20 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsGenoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA)7 km from centre23 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaGenoa
City population387,971558,745
People per km²2,7542,325
Museums within 10 km6651
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6241
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 Genoa 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. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.