Bologna or Rovinj?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.
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.
The verdict
Choose Bologna if your days are built around museums, eating out and going out after dark, all within walking distance of the centre, and if you would rather have warm, dry months than sea access.
Choose Rovinj if the trip is about swimming: 55 beaches nearby and four months of sea at 21°C or more, and if you are content with quiet evenings and few indoor options.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Rovinj leads by 73 points.73
| Bologna | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 73 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 4 |
| Beaches 10 km | 2 | 55 |
| Coast distance | 74 km | 1 km |
| Water distance | — | 1 km |
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 31 points.31
| Bologna | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 58 | 27 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 822 | 130 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 20 | 14 |
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 39 points.39
| Bologna | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 67 | 28 |
| Museums within 10 km | 58 | 5 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 43 | 4 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 74 | 80 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 3 | 1 |
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 44 points.44
| Bologna | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 53 | 9 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 720 | 75 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 531 | 66 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 74 | 88 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 30 | 5 |
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 29 points.29
| Bologna | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 39 | 10 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 7 | 2 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 1 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 38 |
| Park area within 2 km | 119 hectares | 8 hectares |
Good for families. Bologna leads by 36 points.36
| Bologna | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 55 | 19 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 32 | 6 |
| Park area within 2 km | 119 hectares | 8 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 3 |
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 60 points.60
| Bologna | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 0 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 120 | 2 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Rovinj leads by 12 points.12
| Bologna | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 80 |
| Price level global | 64.9 | 48.5 |
| Daily budget | €155 | €138 |
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 2 points.2
| Bologna | Rovinj | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 67 | 65 |
| Monthly daytime high | 7 °C to 31.5 °C | 8.8 °C to 29.1 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 34 mm to 75 mm | 51 mm to 125 mm |
| Dry months | 5 | 0 |
Where they differ
Bologna packs many times more notable places within walking distance of the centre, so a day needs no transport. It also has many times as many bars and clubs, most of them central, and many times as many museums.
Rovinj is the swimming trip: 55 beaches close by against Bologna's 2, and four months when the sea sits at 21°C or warmer, reaching 26°C in August. Bologna has no equivalent coast, and its nearest swimming is marginal.
Where they are alike
Both run on the same calendar: warmest in July, coolest in January, with similar annual sunshine. Bologna is the warmer of the two at each end of the year, but neither offers an easy winter.
National price levels are close as well, €155 for Italy and €138 for Croatia. And neither place is much of a base for wild country: protected land is a small share of the surroundings in both cases.
Which traveller are you?
A traveller who wants museums and old buildings should take Bologna: many times as many museums as Rovinj, 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and enough close to the centre to fill several days.
Families splitting the day between water and rides will do better in Rovinj, with 3 theme parks within reach and the sea at 26°C in high summer. Bologna answers with more central attractions and park space, but no coast.
Anyone who eats late and stays out should choose Bologna: many times as many places to drink and to dance as Rovinj, most of them central, and a wider range of restaurants and kitchens.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget is a national price level, €155 for Italy and €138 for Croatia, not a measurement of either city. A university city and a small coastal town can each sit far from their own country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so it says nothing about which trip will cost more.
Rovinj's beach count sits beside a population of 13,000: 55 beaches serve a town that small only in the months when the sea is warm, and those are the months everyone comes. Its strength is narrow in time, and outside it there is little indoors to fall back on.
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.
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). Rovinj: 1991-2020 normals, Trieste (63.7 km from centre).
Bologna suits May and June, when highs run 24-29°C and rainfall stays at 37-50mm, and it stays workable into early autumn. High summer peaks at 32°C, hot for walking a city, and rain returns in autumn at around 75mm a month.
Rovinj is the summer pick: from June to August the sea holds 22-26°C and highs sit at 27-29°C. Autumn is the catch, with 113-125mm of rain a month, wetter than anything Bologna gets.
Getting there
| Flying from | Bologna | Rovinj |
|---|---|---|
| MadridMAD | 2 h 10 m no fares BLQ · 6 km | 2 h 20 m €102-159 VCE · 111 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 50 m no fares BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 45 m €190-215 1 stop VCE · 111 km |
| ViennaVIE | 1 h 20 m €85-160 BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 10 m €65-121 VCE · 111 km |
| RomeFCO, CIA | 1 h 0 m no fares BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 10 m no fares TRS · 84 km |
| BucharestOTP, BBU | 2 h 5 m €74-144 BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 55 m €50-66 TSF · 129 km |
| CataniaCTA | 1 h 40 m €41-45 BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 45 m no fares TRS · 84 km |
| MunichMUC | 1 h 10 m no fares BLQ · 6 km | 1 h 5 m €268-289 VCE · 111 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 5 h 55 m no fares BLQ · 6 km | 5 h 55 m €366-421 2 stops VCE · 111 km |
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 8 h 30 m €637-650 VCE · 138 km | 8 h 30 m €637-650 VCE · 111 km |
| BeijingPEK, PKX | 9 h 55 m no fares VCE · 138 km | 9 h 55 m no fares VCE · 111 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 2026-10, 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
| Measure | Bologna | Rovinj |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Italian | Croatian |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CFL230 V, 50 Hz | CF230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 54 m | 0 m |
| Main airport | Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinations | Pula Airport (PUY)31 km from centre34 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 13 days | 14 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Bologna | Rovinj |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 387,971 | 12,968 |
| People per km² | 2,754 | – |
| Museums within 10 km | 66 | 1 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 3 | 1 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 62 | 22 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | – | 4 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bologna or Rovinj somewhere new.