VacationSelector

Bologna or Ghent?

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 sights concentration and year-round weather with your weighting.

Ghent
50
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.

BolognaGhent
Beaches & swimming. Ghent leads by 26 points.26
BolognaGhent
Score026
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km28
Coast distance74 km32 km
Water distance—32 km
Places to eat. Ghent leads by 12 points.12
BolognaGhent
Score5870
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822764
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2049
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 9 points.9
BolognaGhent
Score6758
Museums within 10 km5824
Museums within 2 km of centre4320
Share of museums within 2 km %7483
Unesco sites within 50 km35
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 4 points.4
BolognaGhent
Score5349
Drinking venues within 4 km720570
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531446
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7478
Nightclubs within 4 km3026
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 5 points.5
BolognaGhent
Score3934
Protected land share 50 km %77
Landscape blanket share 50 km %14
Land share of disc %10087
Park area within 2 km119 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 5 points.5
BolognaGhent
Score5550
Tourist attractions within 2 km3219
Park area within 2 km119 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 14 points.14
BolognaGhent
Score6046
Notable places within 2 km12055
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 8 points.8
BolognaGhent
Score6860
Price level global64.976.2
Daily budget€155€180
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 11 points.11
BolognaGhent
Score6756
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C6.4 °C to 22 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm35 mm to 79 mm
Dry months51
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
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
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). Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaGhent
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
€96-199
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 30 m
€71-157
CRL · 84 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
CRL · 84 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 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

MeasureBolognaGhent
Official languageItalianFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m12 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaGhent
City population387,971272,657
People per km²2,7541,728
Museums within 10 km6630
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km35
Distinct cuisines in the centre6283
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bologna or Ghent 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. 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.