VacationSelector

Bologna or Plovdiv?

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

Your match

Bologna
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Plovdiv
44
match

Wins on value for money 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.

BolognaPlovdiv
Beaches & swimming. Bologna and Plovdiv are level on 0.
BolognaPlovdiv
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km21
Coast distance74 km130 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 12 points.12
BolognaPlovdiv
Score5846
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822369
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2019
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 29 points.29
BolognaPlovdiv
Score6738
Museums within 10 km5826
Museums within 2 km of centre4326
Share of museums within 2 km %74100
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 11 points.11
BolognaPlovdiv
Score5342
Drinking venues within 4 km720392
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531285
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7473
Nightclubs within 4 km3026
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 2 points.2
BolognaPlovdiv
Score3937
Protected land share 50 km %75
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares125 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 24 points.24
BolognaPlovdiv
Score5531
Tourist attractions within 2 km325
Park area within 2 km119 hectares125 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 19 points.19
BolognaPlovdiv
Score6041
Notable places within 2 km12041
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Plovdiv leads by 31 points.31
BolognaPlovdiv
Score6899
Price level global64.921.4
Daily budget€155€77
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 2 points.2
BolognaPlovdiv
Score6765
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C5.4 °C to 31.1 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm25 mm to 81 mm
Dry months52
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
Plovdiv
5
9
14
19
24
28
31
31
26
19
13
7
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Plovdiv
65
63
61
53
67
62
40
25
48
66
59
81
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Plovdiv
10
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
Plovdiv
3
4
5
6
8
9
10
10
7
5
3
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). Plovdiv: 1997-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Plovdiv (1.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaPlovdiv
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 5 m
€70-85
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 15 m
€116-123
SOF · 125 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
SOF · 125 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 20 m
€130-210
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 20 m
€85-160
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 35 m
€74-99
SOF · 125 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 45 m
€88-145
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 45 m
€99-135
1 stop
SOF · 125 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 45 m
€55-68
SOF · 125 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 40 m
€289-462
1 stop
VRN · 106 km
2 h 30 m
€154-198
SOF · 125 km
MaleMLE
9 h 35 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
SOF · 125 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

MeasureBolognaPlovdiv
Official languageItalianBulgarian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m172 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsPlovdiv International Airport (PDV)12 km from centre8 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaPlovdiv
City population387,971333,994
People per km²2,7543,274
Museums within 10 km6618
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre6236

Where else could you go?

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