VacationSelector

Bologna or Munich?

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 year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Munich
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on good for families 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 the weather is what decides it: warmer days through the year, drier late spring, and day trips that reach more UNESCO-listed places from a walkable centre.

Choose Munich if you are travelling with children, or if eating and going out shape the trip: far more attractions and park space near the centre, two theme parks within reach, and a much wider range of kitchens.

Scoreboard

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

BolognaMunich
Beaches & swimming. Bologna and Munich are level on 0.
BolognaMunich
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km26
Coast distance74 km579 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Munich leads by 15 points.15
BolognaMunich
Score5873
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8221,280
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2035
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
BolognaMunich
Score6761
Museums within 10 km5874
Museums within 2 km of centre4348
Share of museums within 2 km %7465
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Munich leads by 14 points.14
BolognaMunich
Score5367
Drinking venues within 4 km7201,335
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531763
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7457
Nightclubs within 4 km30103
Nature & day trips. Munich leads by 9 points.9
BolognaMunich
Score3948
Protected land share 50 km %717
Landscape blanket share 50 km %115
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares199 hectares
Good for families. Munich leads by 24 points.24
BolognaMunich
Score5579
Tourist attractions within 2 km3280
Park area within 2 km119 hectares199 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Munich leads by 8 points.8
BolognaMunich
Score6068
Notable places within 2 km120196
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 8 points.8
BolognaMunich
Score6860
Price level global64.975.9
Daily budget€155€163
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 11 points.11
BolognaMunich
Score6756
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C4 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm46 mm to 121 mm
Dry months50
0255075100

Where they differ

Bologna runs warmer year-round, with daytime highs of 7-32°C against Munich's 4-25°C, and it has 5 months at 40mm of rain or less where Munich has none. Its day trips also reach more UNESCO-listed places.

Munich has about twice as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens, twice as many places to drink and three times as many nightclubs. For families, it has about three times as many attractions near the centre, twice the park space, and 2 theme parks within reach.

Where they are alike

Neither is a swimming destination. Both sit inland, and neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so beach time means a day out rather than a free afternoon.

They are closer on cost and on layout. The national price levels behind them, €155 a day in Italy and €163 in Germany, sit near each other, and both concentrate their notable places within walking distance of the centre, Munich with more of them.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Munich, with about three times as many attractions near the centre, twice the park space and 2 theme parks within reach. Summer highs of 25°C are also easier going than Bologna's 32°C.

Museum-led trips: Bologna's day trips reach three UNESCO-listed places against Munich's one, though Munich holds somewhat more museums itself and packs more notable places into walking distance of its centre.

Evenings out: Munich, for roughly twice as many restaurants near the centre and a far wider range of kitchens, plus more bars and clubs, though only about half of its nightlife sits centrally, where Bologna's is concentrated.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget, €155 for Italy and €163 for Germany, is a national estimate of restaurant and hotel price levels, not a measurement of either city. A large or heavily visited city can sit well above its own national average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so this says nothing about which trip will cost you more.

Munich's warmest months are also its wettest, carrying the heaviest rain of the year, so a warm month there is not a dry one. Bologna holds its warmth into early autumn while rainfall roughly doubles from midsummer.

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
Munich
4
6
10
15
19
23
25
25
20
15
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Munich
52
46
61
56
107
121
119
117
78
67
58
59
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Munich
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Munich
2
3
5
6
7
7
8
8
6
4
2
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). Munich: 1991-2020 normals, München (1.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bologna is at its best in May and June, with highs of 24-29°C and rain under 50mm. Midsummer climbs to 32°C, and September stays warm but rainfall rises to 75mm.

Munich's warm window is narrower and wetter. July and August bring highs of 25°C, but they are also among its rainiest months, at 117-119mm, with early summer wetter still. If you want warmth without heavy rain, Munich gives you fewer options across the year than Bologna does.

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaMunich
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 45 m
€116-210
MUC · 29 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 30 m
€127-141
MUC · 29 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 55 m
€166-216
MUC · 29 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 30 m
€183-250
MUC · 29 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 25 m
€227-312
1 stop
MUC · 29 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 0 m
€177-210
MUC · 29 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
6 h 0 m
€292-332
MUC · 29 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 29 km
MaleMLE
9 h 35 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
MUC · 29 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

MeasureBolognaMunich
Official languageItalianGerman
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 m519 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsMunich Airport (MUC)29 km from centre208 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaMunich
City population387,9711,510,378
People per km²2,7544,861
Museums within 10 km6674
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6289

Where else could you go?

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