VacationSelector

Bologna or Riga?

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 good for families and year-round weather with your weighting.

Riga
53
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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.

BolognaRiga
Beaches & swimming. Riga leads by 40 points.40
BolognaRiga
Score040
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km257
Coast distance74 km12 km
Water distance12 km
Places to eat. Riga leads by 1 points.1
BolognaRiga
Score5859
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2033
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
BolognaRiga
Score6761
Museums within 10 km5869
Museums within 2 km of centre4347
Share of museums within 2 km %7468
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 2 points.2
BolognaRiga
Score5351
Drinking venues within 4 km720584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7478
Nightclubs within 4 km3054
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 5 points.5
BolognaRiga
Score3944
Protected land share 50 km %710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10073
Park area within 2 km119 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 20 points.20
BolognaRiga
Score5535
Tourist attractions within 2 km327
Park area within 2 km119 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 2 points.2
BolognaRiga
Score6062
Notable places within 2 km120137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 8 points.8
BolognaRiga
Score6876
Price level global64.953.7
Daily budget€155€132
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 15 points.15
BolognaRiga
Score6752
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm33 mm to 87 mm
Dry months53
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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Riga
No sunshine record

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). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaRiga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 20 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
2 h 55 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 20 m
€85-160
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
Sharm el SheikhSSH
4 h 0 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
4 h 35 m
no fares
RIX · 9 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

MeasureBolognaRiga
Official languageItalianLatvian
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 m6 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaRiga
City population387,971588,911
People per km²2,754
Museums within 10 km6612
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre6255
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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