VacationSelector

Bologna or Philadelphia?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Bologna
52
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Philadelphia
51
match

Wins on places to eat and nature & day trips 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.

BolognaPhiladelphia
Beaches & swimming. Bologna and Philadelphia are level on 0.
BolognaPhiladelphia
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km21
Coast distance74 km13 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Philadelphia leads by 19 points.19
BolognaPhiladelphia
Score5877
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8221,714
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2035
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 7 points.7
BolognaPhiladelphia
Score6760
Museums within 10 km5889
Museums within 2 km of centre4348
Share of museums within 2 km %7454
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Philadelphia leads by 6 points.6
BolognaPhiladelphia
Score5359
Drinking venues within 4 km720930
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531575
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7462
Nightclubs within 4 km3041
Nature & day trips. Philadelphia leads by 10 points.10
BolognaPhiladelphia
Score3949
Protected land share 50 km %714
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10089
Park area within 2 km119 hectares75 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 2 points.2
BolognaPhiladelphia
Score5553
Tourist attractions within 2 km3216
Park area within 2 km119 hectares75 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km04
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
BolognaPhiladelphia
Score6054
Notable places within 2 km12088
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 25 points.25
BolognaPhiladelphia
Score6843
Price level global64.9100
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 7 points.7
BolognaPhiladelphia
Score6760
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C5.2 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm69 mm to 112 mm
Dry months50
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
Philadelphia
5
7
12
18
24
28
31
30
26
20
13
8
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Philadelphia
79
69
101
88
86
103
111
109
112
88
74
101
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Philadelphia
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
Philadelphia
4
5
6
7
9
9
8
9
7
7
5
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). Philadelphia: 1991-2020 normals, Philadelphia International Airport (11.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaPhiladelphia
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
9 h 15 m
no fares
JFK · 140 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
8 h 5 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 30 m
€83-129
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
EWR · 117 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 55 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
1 h 55 m
€60-108
PHL · 11 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
PHL · 11 km
CasablancaCMN
3 h 5 m
€180-238
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
JFK · 140 km
CancunCUN
11 h 10 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
PHL · 11 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBolognaPhiladelphia
Official languageItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation54 m12 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsPhiladelphia International Airport (PHL)11 km from centre128 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaPhiladelphia
City population387,9711,603,797
People per km²2,7544,339
Museums within 10 km6654
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6275

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bologna or Philadelphia 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.

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.