VacationSelector

Bologna or Helsinki?

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 museums & heritage with your weighting.

Helsinki
✓ Best match
57
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.

BolognaHelsinki
Beaches & swimming. Helsinki leads by 60 points.60
BolognaHelsinki
Score060
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2157
Coast distance74 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Helsinki leads by 13 points.13
BolognaHelsinki
Score5871
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8221,005
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2038
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 18 points.18
BolognaHelsinki
Score6749
Museums within 10 km5857
Museums within 2 km of centre4323
Share of museums within 2 km %7440
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Helsinki leads by 3 points.3
BolognaHelsinki
Score5356
Drinking venues within 4 km720807
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531607
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7475
Nightclubs within 4 km3040
Nature & day trips. Helsinki leads by 3 points.3
BolognaHelsinki
Score3942
Protected land share 50 km %73
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10053
Park area within 2 km119 hectares185 hectares
Good for families. Helsinki leads by 3 points.3
BolognaHelsinki
Score5558
Tourist attractions within 2 km3220
Park area within 2 km119 hectares185 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Helsinki leads by 13 points.13
BolognaHelsinki
Score6073
Notable places within 2 km120257
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 12 points.12
BolognaHelsinki
Score6856
Price level global64.981.6
Daily budget€155€184
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 19 points.19
BolognaHelsinki
Score6748
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C-1.5 °C to 21.9 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm32 mm to 84 mm
Dry months53
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
Helsinki
-1
-1
2
8
15
19
22
21
15
9
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Helsinki
2
1
1
2
6
11
16
17
14
10
7
4
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Helsinki
54
38
35
32
41
56
58
84
55
75
70
59
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Helsinki
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Helsinki
1
2
5
7
9
9
9
8
5
3
1
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). Helsinki: 1991-2020 normals, Helsinki Kaisaniemi / Harju (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaHelsinki
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 50 m
€112-224
HEL · 16 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 50 m
€120-185
1 stop
PSA · 118 km
1 h 10 m
€62-63
HEL · 16 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 55 m
€187-219
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 10 m
€206-225
HEL · 16 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 25 m
€251-299
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 45 m
€212-264
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 30 m
€203-241
1 stop
HEL · 16 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
HEL · 16 km
DohaDOH
5 h 35 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
5 h 50 m
no fares
HEL · 16 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

MeasureBolognaHelsinki
Official languageItalianFinnish, Swedish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m17 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsHelsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)16 km from centre120 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaHelsinki
City population387,971694,392
People per km²2,7543,239
Museums within 10 km6674
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
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 Helsinki 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.