VacationSelector

Bologna or Malaga?

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 sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Malaga
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

BolognaMalaga
Beaches & swimming. Malaga leads by 66 points.66
BolognaMalaga
Score066
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km221
Coast distance74 km0 km
Water distance—0 km
Places to eat. Malaga leads by 11 points.11
BolognaMalaga
Score5869
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8221,002
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2034
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 14 points.14
BolognaMalaga
Score6753
Museums within 10 km5840
Museums within 2 km of centre4335
Share of museums within 2 km %7488
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Malaga leads by 1 points.1
BolognaMalaga
Score5354
Drinking venues within 4 km720715
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531486
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7468
Nightclubs within 4 km3045
Nature & day trips. Malaga leads by 4 points.4
BolognaMalaga
Score3943
Protected land share 50 km %77
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10063
Park area within 2 km119 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 2 points.2
BolognaMalaga
Score5553
Tourist attractions within 2 km3233
Park area within 2 km119 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 23 points.23
BolognaMalaga
Score6037
Notable places within 2 km12033
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Malaga leads by 3 points.3
BolognaMalaga
Score6871
Price level global64.960.8
Daily budget€155€122
Year-round weather. Malaga leads by 15 points.15
BolognaMalaga
Score6782
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C17.2 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm0 mm to 88 mm
Dry months55
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
Malaga
17
18
20
22
25
29
31
32
28
24
20
18
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Malaga
15
15
15
16
18
20
22
23
22
20
17
16
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Malaga
62
55
66
41
23
4
0
3
25
60
78
88
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Malaga
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Malaga
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5

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). Malaga: 1991-2020 normals, Malaga / Aeropuerto (8.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaMalaga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 40 m
€67-129
AGP · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 35 m
€73-109
AGP · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 25 m
€92
AGP · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 55 m
€146-177
AGP · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
4 h 5 m
€185-196
AGP · 9 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 40 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 45 m
€110-142
1 stop
AGP · 9 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
€96-199
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
CasablancaCMN
3 h 5 m
€180-238
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
AGP · 9 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
AGP · 9 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

MeasureBolognaMalaga
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 m18 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsMálaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP)9 km from centre165 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaMalaga
City population387,971599,063
People per km²2,7541,517
Museums within 10 km6632
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6265
Swim season, months above 21 °C–3 months

Where else could you go?

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