VacationSelector

Bologna or Salzburg?

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 nightlife and sights concentration with your weighting.

Salzburg
42
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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 you want a compact city where more of the notable places sit within walking distance, with more restaurants and more places to drink near the centre, and a warmer, drier year.

Choose Salzburg if you are travelling with children who want theme parks, 4 within reach against none in Bologna, or if a wider range of kitchens appeals more than a dense centre.

Scoreboard

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

BolognaSalzburg
Beaches & swimming. Bologna and Salzburg are level on 0.
BolognaSalzburg
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km29
Coast distance74 km653 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 9 points.9
BolognaSalzburg
Score5849
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822348
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2023
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 7 points.7
BolognaSalzburg
Score6760
Museums within 10 km5842
Museums within 2 km of centre4327
Share of museums within 2 km %7464
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 17 points.17
BolognaSalzburg
Score5336
Drinking venues within 4 km720294
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531241
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7482
Nightclubs within 4 km3016
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 12 points.12
BolognaSalzburg
Score3927
Protected land share 50 km %76
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 7 points.7
BolognaSalzburg
Score5548
Tourist attractions within 2 km3217
Park area within 2 km119 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km04
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 14 points.14
BolognaSalzburg
Score6046
Notable places within 2 km12054
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna leads by 9 points.9
BolognaSalzburg
Score6859
Price level global64.976.9
Daily budget€155€160
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 13 points.13
BolognaSalzburg
Score6754
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C3.4 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm47 mm to 168 mm
Dry months50
0255075100

Where they differ

Bologna packs about twice as many notable places into walking distance of the centre, with roughly twice as many restaurants nearby and twice as many bars and clubs, most of them central. It also runs warmer through the year, highs of 7-32°C against 3-25°C, and it has 5 months at 40mm of rain or less where Salzburg has none.

Salzburg offers a wider spread of kitchens, 4 theme parks within reach where Bologna has none, and 9 beaches nearby against Bologna's 2, though neither has sea warm enough for swimming.

Where they are alike

Neither city is a swimming destination: neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, and whatever water is nearby is a side trip rather than a reason to book.

On heritage they are close: Bologna has somewhat more museums, but both have 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach. Families are a near-tie, each offering different things, and the estimated daily budgets for the two countries sit close together, €155 for Italy and €160 for Austria.

Which traveller are you?

Someone who wants to walk to everything should take Bologna: about twice as many notable places sit within reach of the centre, and it has more museums, though both put 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip range.

Eating and drinking favour Bologna too, with roughly twice as many restaurants and twice as many bars and clubs near the centre. Salzburg suits you better if the range of kitchens matters more than sheer choice.

Families split. Salzburg has 4 theme parks within reach and Bologna none; Bologna answers with about twice as many attractions near the centre and three times as much central park space.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €155 for Italy and €160 for Austria, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of Bologna or Salzburg. A heavily visited city can sit well above its own country's average, by more than the gap between these two numbers, so neither figure tells you what a week will actually cost.

Salzburg's beach count flatters it: neither city has sea warm enough to swim in. Bologna's edge outdoors rests mostly on park space near the centre, since the protected land around the two is close to the same. And its driest months, July and August, are also its hottest at 32°C.

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
Salzburg
3
6
10
16
20
23
25
25
20
15
8
4
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Salzburg
62
47
83
80
142
168
159
167
127
90
70
67
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Salzburg
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Salzburg
3
3
5
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
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). Salzburg: 1991-2020 normals, Salzburg (3.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bologna's best stretch runs May to September. May and June bring highs of 24-29°C with 37-50mm of rain; July and August are hottest at 32°C and driest, 34-40mm. September holds 26°C but turns wet at 75mm.

Salzburg peaks in July and August at 25°C, though those are also its wettest months at 159-167mm. September cools to 20°C with 127mm, still wetter than any Bologna summer month. If you want Salzburg dry, no month obliges; take the warmth and pack for rain.

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaSalzburg
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 55 m
€166-216
MUC · 112 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 30 m
€183-250
MUC · 112 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 25 m
€227-312
1 stop
MUC · 112 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 55 m
€186-283
SZG · 3 km
AthensATH
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 25 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 30 m
€141-202
MUC · 112 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
CasablancaCMN
3 h 5 m
€180-238
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
MUC · 112 km
MaleMLE
9 h 35 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
MUC · 112 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

MeasureBolognaSalzburg
Official languageItalianGerman, Austrian Sign Language
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m424 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsSalzburg Airport (SZG)3 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaSalzburg
City population387,971155,021
People per km²2,7542,360
Museums within 10 km6638
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre6250

Where else could you go?

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