VacationSelector

Bologna or San Sebastian?

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 museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BolognaSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
BolognaSan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km210
Coast distance74 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 3 points.3
BolognaSan Sebastian
Score5855
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2026
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 28 points.28
BolognaSan Sebastian
Score6739
Museums within 10 km5817
Museums within 2 km of centre437
Share of museums within 2 km %7441
Unesco sites within 50 km33
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 13 points.13
BolognaSan Sebastian
Score5340
Drinking venues within 4 km720388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7487
Nightclubs within 4 km3012
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 17 points.17
BolognaSan Sebastian
Score3956
Protected land share 50 km %711
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km119 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 25 points.25
BolognaSan Sebastian
Score5530
Tourist attractions within 2 km325
Park area within 2 km119 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
BolognaSan Sebastian
Score6054
Notable places within 2 km12089
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 3 points.3
BolognaSan Sebastian
Score6871
Price level global64.960.8
Daily budget€155€122
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 9 points.9
BolognaSan Sebastian
Score6758
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm92 mm to 203 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
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Sebastian
9
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
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3

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). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 16 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 45 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
CasablancaCMN
3 h 5 m
€180-238
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 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

MeasureBolognaSan Sebastian
Official languageItalianSpanish
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 m6 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaSan Sebastian
City population387,971189,866
People per km²2,7543,118
Museums within 10 km6614
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km33
Distinct cuisines in the centre6245
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

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