VacationSelector

Bologna or Lyon?

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, level with your weighting

Bologna
52
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Lyon
52
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife 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.

BolognaLyon
Beaches & swimming. Bologna and Lyon are level on 0.
BolognaLyon
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km226
Coast distance74 km253 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 21 points.21
BolognaLyon
Score5879
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8221,691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2040
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 12 points.12
BolognaLyon
Score6755
Museums within 10 km5853
Museums within 2 km of centre4325
Share of museums within 2 km %7447
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 5 points.5
BolognaLyon
Score5358
Drinking venues within 4 km720866
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531611
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7471
Nightclubs within 4 km3047
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
BolognaLyon
Score3933
Protected land share 50 km %76
Landscape blanket share 50 km %16
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares120 hectares
Good for families. Lyon leads by 4 points.4
BolognaLyon
Score5559
Tourist attractions within 2 km3225
Park area within 2 km119 hectares120 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
BolognaLyon
Score6054
Notable places within 2 km12086
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
BolognaLyon
Score6862
Price level global64.973.7
Daily budget€155€160
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 3 points.3
BolognaLyon
Score6764
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C7 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm43 mm to 101 mm
Dry months50
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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lyon
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
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
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). Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaLyon
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 20 m
€70-92
LYS · 20 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
CasablancaCMN
3 h 5 m
€180-238
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
8 h 10 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 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

MeasureBolognaLyon
Official languageItalianFrench
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 m160 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaLyon
City population387,971519,127
People per km²2,75410,838
Museums within 10 km6642
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre62148

Where else could you go?

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