VacationSelector

Bologna or Interlaken?

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

Your match

Bologna
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Interlaken
23
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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 you want a city trip taken on foot: museums, places to eat and bars clustered near the centre, and a long stretch of workable months from spring into early autumn.

Choose Interlaken if the mountains are the point and the town is only a base. Much of the land around it is protected, and summers stay milder, near 24°C in July against Bologna's 32°C.

Scoreboard

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

BolognaInterlaken
Beaches & swimming. Bologna and Interlaken are level on 0.
BolognaInterlaken
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km212
Coast distance74 km713 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 29 points.29
BolognaInterlaken
Score5829
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822118
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2017
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 44 points.44
BolognaInterlaken
Score6723
Museums within 10 km585
Museums within 2 km of centre432
Share of museums within 2 km %7440
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 49 points.49
BolognaInterlaken
Score534
Drinking venues within 4 km72042
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre53138
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7490
Nightclubs within 4 km303
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 12 points.12
BolognaInterlaken
Score3927
Protected land share 50 km %719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares5 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 41 points.41
BolognaInterlaken
Score5514
Tourist attractions within 2 km3211
Park area within 2 km119 hectares5 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 38 points.38
BolognaInterlaken
Score6022
Notable places within 2 km12014
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 33 points.33
BolognaInterlaken
Score6835
Price level global64.9110.5
Daily budget€155€248
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 10 points.10
BolognaInterlaken
Score6757
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C2.8 °C to 23.6 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm34 mm to 68 mm
Dry months53
0255075100

Where they differ

Bologna carries the cultural weight: many times as many museums as Interlaken, sitting close together around the centre, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2. Evenings differ just as sharply, with many times as many bars and clubs, and about three times as many attractions near the centre, plus far more park space.

Interlaken's advantage is the ground outside town: 19% of the surrounding land is protected against 7% around Bologna, and there are 12 beaches nearby against Bologna's 2.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination. Interlaken has 12 beaches nearby and Bologna 2, but neither has a month with water at 21°C or more, so a dip is an occasional summer extra rather than a reason to book either.

Their years also run in parallel: July is the warmest month in both and January the coolest, and each sits within reach of protected countryside and UNESCO-listed places for a day out.

Which traveller are you?

Museum-minded travellers should take Bologna. It has many times as many museums as Interlaken, gathered tightly around the centre, with far more notable places within walking distance and 3 UNESCO-listed sites within day-trip reach.

Walkers and lake bathers are better served by Interlaken, where 19% of the surrounding land is protected and 12 beaches sit nearby, though the water never warms enough for a real swimming season.

Families and night owls both point to Bologna: about three times as many attractions near the centre, much more park space, and many times as many bars and clubs. Neither town has a theme park within reach.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €155 and €248, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels rather than measurements of Bologna or Interlaken. A heavily visited town can sit well away from its own country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so read them as country context and check real prices for your dates.

The weather comparison is also incomplete: no station near Interlaken records sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low, and its monthly ratings rest on temperature and rainfall alone.

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
Interlaken
3
5
9
15
17
22
24
23
18
14
7
4
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Interlaken
53
41
37
34
52
48
62
61
38
43
51
68
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Interlaken
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Interlaken
No sunshine record

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). Interlaken: 2005-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Meiringen / Unterbach (19.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bologna is best in May and June, when highs run 24-29°C and rain stays under 55mm. High summer reaches 32°C, hot for a full day on foot, and autumn turns wet, near 75mm a month.

Interlaken comes into its own in July and August at 23-24°C, comfortable for walking, though these are also its wettest months, at around 61mm. September is drier, at 38mm, and still mild. Winter is cold and the quietest stretch.

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaInterlaken
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 100 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 100 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 100 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 100 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
BSL · 105 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 100 km
MaleMLE
9 h 35 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
9 h 50 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 km
CancunCUN
11 h 10 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 100 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

MeasureBolognaInterlaken
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 m571 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)100 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days10 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaInterlaken
City population387,9716,123
People per km²2,7541,424
Museums within 10 km663
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre6222

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bologna or Interlaken 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. 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.