VacationSelector

Bologna or Marseille?

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 museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Marseille
✓ 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.

The verdict

Choose Bologna if museums and heritage are the point of the trip: it has about twice as many museums as Marseille, more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and hotter summer days, up to 32°C in July.

Choose Marseille if you want swimming: 64 beaches nearby, sea reaching 22°C in August, and a wider range of places to eat.

Scoreboard

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

BolognaMarseille
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 67 points.67
BolognaMarseille
Score067
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km264
Coast distance74 km0 km
Water distance—0 km
Places to eat. Marseille leads by 17 points.17
BolognaMarseille
Score5875
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8221,320
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2039
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 17 points.17
BolognaMarseille
Score6750
Museums within 10 km5833
Museums within 2 km of centre4323
Share of museums within 2 km %7470
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 5 points.5
BolognaMarseille
Score5348
Drinking venues within 4 km720544
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531454
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7483
Nightclubs within 4 km3030
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 2 points.2
BolognaMarseille
Score3937
Protected land share 50 km %715
Landscape blanket share 50 km %113
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km119 hectares25 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 11 points.11
BolognaMarseille
Score5544
Tourist attractions within 2 km3217
Park area within 2 km119 hectares25 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km04
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 2 points.2
BolognaMarseille
Score6058
Notable places within 2 km120111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
BolognaMarseille
Score6862
Price level global64.973.7
Daily budget€155€160
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 8 points.8
BolognaMarseille
Score6775
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C11.8 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm11 mm to 82 mm
Dry months56
0255075100

Where they differ

Bologna is the heritage trip: about twice as many museums as Marseille, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 1. It also packs about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre, and far more park space to break up a day of walking.

Marseille is where you swim, with 64 beaches nearby against Bologna's 2 and two months of sea at 21°C or more. It also has about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens.

Where they are alike

Both put a similar number of notable places within walking distance of the centre, so each works as a city you cover on foot.

Day trips are the weaker side in both: 15% of the land around Marseille is protected against 7% around Bologna, and neither offers much beyond that. Nightlife is close as well, with a similar number of nightclubs and, in both, most drinking places near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

A traveller who plans days around museums should take Bologna: about twice as many museums as Marseille, more UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and enough notable places near the centre to fill a walking day.

Anyone whose holiday means swimming and eating out belongs in Marseille: 64 beaches nearby, sea at 22°C in August, and roughly twice as many restaurants near the centre, across a wider range of kitchens.

Families split. Bologna offers about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre and far more park space; Marseille counters with 4 theme parks within reach and beaches that occupy children all day.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €155 for Italy and €160 for France, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of either city. The distance between a city and its own country's average can exceed the gap between the two figures, so neither is evidence about cost here.

Marseille's beaches only work for part of the year: the sea passes 21°C only briefly in late summer, which pushes swimming into the hottest and busiest weeks. September, warm at 26°C in both cities, is also the wettest month in each.

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
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
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). Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bologna is at its best from May to September, and June is the pick: 29°C days with 37mm of rain. July and August reach 32°C, which is a lot for a city with no sea. Autumn turns wet, with 75mm in both September and October.

Marseille holds up better outside summer, with January highs of 12°C against Bologna's 7°C, and its July is the drier of the two at 11mm. September brings 82mm, so plan around it.

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaMarseille
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 40 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 40 m
€86-123
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
CasablancaCMN
3 h 5 m
€180-238
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
8 h 10 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 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 2026-10, 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

MeasureBolognaMarseille
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 m0 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaMarseille
City population387,971886,040
People per km²2,7543,683
Museums within 10 km6627
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6293
Swim season, months above 21 °C–2 months

Where else could you go?

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