VacationSelector

Bologna or Palermo?

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.

Palermo
✓ Best match
55
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.

The verdict

Choose Bologna if museums and a wide range of kitchens matter more than swimming; it has more attractions and park space near the centre, and its summer runs hot, up to 32°C in high summer.

Choose Palermo if you want the sea: 13 beaches nearby and five months of swimmable water, with milder winters and drier summers.

Scoreboard

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

BolognaPalermo
Beaches & swimming. Palermo leads by 67 points.67
BolognaPalermo
Score067
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km213
Coast distance74 km1 km
Water distance—1 km
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 8 points.8
BolognaPalermo
Score5850
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2013
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 17 points.17
BolognaPalermo
Score6750
Museums within 10 km5832
Museums within 2 km of centre4326
Share of museums within 2 km %7481
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Bologna and Palermo are level on 53.
BolognaPalermo
Score5353
Drinking venues within 4 km720799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7464
Nightclubs within 4 km3016
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 3 points.3
BolognaPalermo
Score3936
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10045
Park area within 2 km119 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 14 points.14
BolognaPalermo
Score5541
Tourist attractions within 2 km3216
Park area within 2 km119 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 3 points.3
BolognaPalermo
Score6057
Notable places within 2 km120104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna and Palermo are level on 68.
BolognaPalermo
Score6868
Price level global64.964.9
Daily budget€155€155
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 10 points.10
BolognaPalermo
Score6777
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months57
0255075100

Where they differ

Bologna has roughly twice the museums, and three UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Palermo's one. Families get more attractions and more park space near the centre, though neither city has a theme park within reach. Its restaurants cover a much wider range of kitchens, and somewhat more notable places sit within walking distance.

Palermo answers with the coast: 13 beaches nearby against Bologna's 2, and five months of sea at 21°C or more, where Bologna has none.

Where they are alike

Nightlife is where they match most closely: a similar number of places to drink, most of them near the centre in both. Bologna has about twice as many nightclubs, but neither asks you to travel far for an evening.

Beyond that, both keep their notable places within walking distance, both have a similar number of restaurants near the centre, and neither is strong for nature day trips: protected land covers 7% around Bologna and 4% around Palermo.

Which traveller are you?

Travelling with children: Bologna. It has more attractions and more park space close to the centre, so days can be filled on foot. Neither city has a theme park within reach, so plan around parks and museums.

Swimming holiday: Palermo, with 13 beaches nearby and sea at 26-27°C at the height of summer. Bologna has almost nothing on this front, and no sea warm enough to matter.

Museums and eating: Bologna. About twice as many museums as Palermo, three UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and restaurants covering a much wider range of kitchens.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figures for these two are identical by construction: they reflect a national price level rather than either city, so the comparison carries no information about which trip costs less. The €155 daily budget beside them is one national estimate, not a measurement of Bologna or Palermo.

Palermo's beach strength rests on the months when the sea is at its warmest, which are also the months most people travel; the same 13 beaches are a different proposition out of season, when highs drop and rain runs to 71mm. Bologna's warm season, meanwhile, is hot: 32°C at midsummer, with no sea to cool off in.

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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
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). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bologna suits late spring, when May and June bring highs of 24-29°C with 37-50mm of rain. Midsummer is hotter at 32°C, and autumn turns wet, at 75mm a month, which makes early summer the safer bet.

Palermo's season runs longer. Through midsummer and into September highs sit at 24-28°C, the sea reaches 26-27°C and rain nearly stops, under 11mm. Winter days near 13°C remain usable, though late autumn is the wet stretch, up to 71mm.

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaPalermo
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 25 m
€101-135
PMO · 25 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 50 m
€49-107
PMO · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 15 m
€183-194
PMO · 25 km
NaplesNAP
1 h 20 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
1 h 0 m
€42-84
PMO · 25 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 25 m
€92-140
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 15 m
€101-154
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 40 m
€289-462
1 stop
VRN · 106 km
3 h 10 m
€151-346
1 stop
PMO · 25 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

MeasureBolognaPalermo
Official languageItalianItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m14 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaPalermo
City population387,971630,167
People per km²2,7543,924
Museums within 10 km6642
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6233
Swim season, months above 21 °C–5 months

Where else could you go?

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