VacationSelector

Bologna or Venice?

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

Your match

Bologna
52
match

Wins on nature & day trips and nightlife with your weighting.

Venice
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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 you want evenings out, a wider choice of kitchens, and parks and protected countryside within easy reach of a compact centre.

Choose Venice if the trip is about the water and about seeing a lot on foot: 20 beaches nearby against Bologna's 2, sea warm enough to swim in for four months, and far more packed into walking distance.

Scoreboard

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

BolognaVenice
Beaches & swimming. Venice leads by 69 points.69
BolognaVenice
Score069
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km220
Coast distance74 km4 km
Water distance—4 km
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 13 points.13
BolognaVenice
Score5845
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822750
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2010
Museums & heritage. Venice leads by 5 points.5
BolognaVenice
Score6772
Museums within 10 km5857
Museums within 2 km of centre4345
Share of museums within 2 km %7479
Unesco sites within 50 km35
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 18 points.18
BolognaVenice
Score5335
Drinking venues within 4 km720342
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531306
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7489
Nightclubs within 4 km303
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 22 points.22
BolognaVenice
Score3917
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10070
Park area within 2 km119 hectares15 hectares
Good for families. Venice leads by 2 points.2
BolognaVenice
Score5557
Tourist attractions within 2 km3272
Park area within 2 km119 hectares15 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km03
Sights concentration. Venice leads by 23 points.23
BolognaVenice
Score6083
Notable places within 2 km120464
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bologna and Venice are level on 68.
BolognaVenice
Score6868
Price level global64.964.9
Daily budget€155€155
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 1 points.1
BolognaVenice
Score6766
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C8 °C to 30.4 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm36 mm to 106 mm
Dry months52
0255075100

Where they differ

Bologna is the better base for days out: 7% of the land around it is protected against 4% around Venice, and it has many times more park space near the centre. Evenings differ too, with about twice as many places to drink and many times as many nightclubs, most of them central, and a wider range of kitchens.

Venice concentrates its interest tightly: about three times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, and 5 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against Bologna's 3.

Where they are alike

The weather is close to identical: both run from 7-8°C in January to around 30-32°C at the peak of summer, with January the coolest month in each. Bologna is marginally the warmer and the drier of the two.

They are also matched for families and for heritage. Venice leans on attractions near the centre and 3 theme parks within reach, Bologna on park space, and the two hold roughly as many museums as each other.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling with children will find Venice the easier fit, with about twice as many tourist attractions near the centre and 3 theme parks within reach, though Bologna answers with far more park space for unstructured days.

Eaters and late-night travellers should take Bologna. It has a much wider range of kitchens, more places to drink and many times as many nightclubs, nearly all of them close to the centre.

Anyone whose holiday involves swimming has only one real option. Venice has 20 beaches nearby against Bologna's 2, and the sea reaches 26°C in August, while Bologna has no coast to fall back on.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value figure here is a national price level, identical for both by construction, so the comparison between these two cities carries no information about cost. The €155 daily budget beside it is one national estimate rather than a measurement of either place.

Venice's warmest sea months are also among its wettest, with 106mm in September, and its interest is packed into one small area, so the walkability that looks like an advantage comes with the crowds that fill it in high summer. Bologna's driest stretch is also its hottest, at 32°C, with no swimming to retreat to.

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
Venice
8
10
15
19
24
28
30
30
25
19
13
8
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Venice
10
9
10
14
18
23
25
26
23
19
16
13
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Venice
38
36
54
78
91
75
65
74
106
89
95
60
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Venice
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Venice
3
4
5
6
7
8
10
9
6
4
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). Venice: 1991-2020 normals, Treviso / S. Angelo (26.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bologna is at its best in May and June, with highs of 24-29°C and 37-50mm of rain, and July stays dry while reaching 32°C. Autumn is the weak spot, when the rain arrives and evenings cool.

Venice is worth timing to the water, from June to August, when the sea is warm enough to swim. Rain is the sharper divide: Venice takes 106mm in September against Bologna's 75mm, and it is the wetter city in most months.

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaVenice
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 0 m
€46-119
1 stop
VCE · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 40 m
€68-109
VCE · 7 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
VCE · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 45 m
€41-56
VCE · 7 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
€96-199
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 35 m
€23-126
TSF · 26 km
MadridMAD
2 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 20 m
€102-159
VCE · 7 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
5 h 55 m
€366-421
2 stops
VCE · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 7 km
MaleMLE
9 h 35 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
VRN · 113 km
CancunCUN
11 h 10 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
VRN · 113 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

MeasureBolognaVenice
Official languageItalianItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m2 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsVenice Marco Polo Airport (VCE)7 km from centre98 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaVenice
City population387,971250,369
People per km²2,754602
Museums within 10 km6652
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km35
Distinct cuisines in the centre6246
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 Venice 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.