VacationSelector

Bologna or Madrid?

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

Your match

Bologna
52
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Madrid
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

BolognaMadrid
Beaches & swimming. Bologna and Madrid are level on 0.
BolognaMadrid
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km24
Coast distance74 km305 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Madrid leads by 25 points.25
BolognaMadrid
Score5883
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8223,508
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2028
Museums & heritage. Madrid leads by 8 points.8
BolognaMadrid
Score6775
Museums within 10 km5897
Museums within 2 km of centre4359
Share of museums within 2 km %7461
Unesco sites within 50 km34
Nightlife. Madrid leads by 28 points.28
BolognaMadrid
Score5381
Drinking venues within 4 km7202,414
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre5311,498
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7462
Nightclubs within 4 km30341
Nature & day trips. Madrid leads by 24 points.24
BolognaMadrid
Score3963
Protected land share 50 km %719
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares187 hectares
Good for families. Madrid leads by 22 points.22
BolognaMadrid
Score5577
Tourist attractions within 2 km3261
Park area within 2 km119 hectares187 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Madrid leads by 15 points.15
BolognaMadrid
Score6075
Notable places within 2 km120288
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Madrid leads by 3 points.3
BolognaMadrid
Score6871
Price level global64.960.8
Daily budget€155€122
Year-round weather. Madrid leads by 5 points.5
BolognaMadrid
Score6772
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C10 °C to 32.7 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm9 mm to 64 mm
Dry months57
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
Madrid
10
12
16
19
23
29
33
32
27
20
14
10
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Madrid
32
34
35
46
49
20
9
10
24
64
53
42
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Madrid
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Madrid
5
5
7
8
9
11
12
11
9
6
5
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). Madrid: 1991-2020 normals, Madrid (1.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaMadrid
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 10 m
€52-105
MAD · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 55 m
€95-123
MAD · 14 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 15 m
€116-130
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 15 m
€83-91
MAD · 14 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 50 m
€182-348
MAD · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
7 h 25 m
€496-659
1 stop
MAD · 14 km
CasablancaCMN
3 h 5 m
€180-238
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
MAD · 14 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 55 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
11 h 30 m
€638-793
2 stops
MAD · 14 km
CancunCUN
11 h 10 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
MAD · 14 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

MeasureBolognaMadrid
Official languageItalianSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m663 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsAdolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD)14 km from centre236 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaMadrid
City population387,9713,506,730
People per km²2,7545,801
Museums within 10 km6688
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km34
Distinct cuisines in the centre62106

Where else could you go?

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