VacationSelector

Bologna or Zadar?

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 museums & heritage and places to eat with your weighting.

Zadar
47
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.

The verdict

Choose Bologna if the trip is about museums, eating and walking: it has many times as many restaurants and museums near the centre, and far more notable places within walking distance of it.

Choose Zadar if the trip is built around the water. It has 49 beaches nearby against Bologna's 2, and four months with the sea at 21°C or more, where Bologna has no swimming season at all.

Scoreboard

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

BolognaZadar
Beaches & swimming. Zadar leads by 73 points.73
BolognaZadar
Score073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km249
Coast distance74 km0 km
Water distance—0 km
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 33 points.33
BolognaZadar
Score5825
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822143
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2011
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 34 points.34
BolognaZadar
Score6733
Museums within 10 km588
Museums within 2 km of centre438
Share of museums within 2 km %74100
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Bologna leads by 28 points.28
BolognaZadar
Score5325
Drinking venues within 4 km720194
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531139
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7472
Nightclubs within 4 km304
Nature & day trips. Zadar leads by 16 points.16
BolognaZadar
Score3955
Protected land share 50 km %712
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10047
Park area within 2 km119 hectares30 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 24 points.24
BolognaZadar
Score5531
Tourist attractions within 2 km329
Park area within 2 km119 hectares30 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 29 points.29
BolognaZadar
Score6031
Notable places within 2 km12023
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zadar leads by 12 points.12
BolognaZadar
Score6880
Price level global64.948.5
Daily budget€155€138
Year-round weather. Zadar leads by 2 points.2
BolognaZadar
Score6769
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C10.4 °C to 31 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm25 mm to 117 mm
Dry months52
0255075100

Where they differ

Bologna is the stronger city for indoor culture and for eating. It has many times as many museums as Zadar, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2. It also has many times as many restaurants near the centre, a much wider range of kitchens, and many times as many notable places within walking distance.

Zadar is the one with a coast. There are 49 beaches nearby against Bologna's 2, and 4 months with the sea at 21°C or more, reaching 25°C at its warmest.

Where they are alike

Weather is where the two are closest. Both peak in July at 31-32°C, and both sit at 7-10°C at their coolest, so summers are hot in each and winters mild rather than severe.

They are also close on value and on what lies beyond town. The two national price estimates are not far apart, and each has countryside in reach: 12% of the land around Zadar is protected, against 7% around Bologna.

Which traveller are you?

Someone travelling for museums, restaurants and evenings out should take Bologna. It has many times as many museums and restaurants near the centre, about three times as many places to drink, and most of them close together.

A swimming holiday points to Zadar: 49 beaches nearby, sea reaching 25°C in August, and a theme park within reach, which Bologna does not have.

Walkers and day-trippers are split. 12% of the land around Zadar is protected against 7% around Bologna, but Bologna has about three times as much park space near the centre and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €155 and €138, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of Bologna or Zadar. A heavily visited city can sit further from its own country's average than the two countries sit from one another, so neither figure tells you which of these trips costs more.

No weather station near Zadar records sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low and its monthly picture rests on temperature, rainfall and sea alone. Its beach strength is also seasonal: the sea is 21°C or more for 4 months, and warm-looking shoulder months fall outside that.

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
Zadar
10
11
15
19
23
28
31
31
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Zadar
14
13
13
14
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Zadar
73
64
59
62
58
49
25
32
82
80
117
99
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zadar
9
10
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
Zadar
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). Zadar: 1999-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Zadar / Zemunik (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bologna is at its best in May-June, warm at 24-29°C and reasonably dry. July-August are its driest stretch but reach 32°C, and autumn turns wet, around 75mm a month.

Zadar peaks in June and holds its form into September, when the sea is still 23°C. July is much its driest month at 25mm, while November is its wettest at 117mm, so the late-season warmth on this coast comes with rain rather than without it.

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaZadar
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 5 m
€169-225
SPU · 107 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 10 m
€186-201
1 stop
SPU · 107 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 5 m
€294
SPU · 107 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 20 m
no fares
ZAD · 10 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 20 m
€85-160
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 10 m
€45-192
ZAD · 10 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 5 m
€108-177
SPU · 107 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
SPU · 107 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 40 m
€161-226
1 stop
ZAD · 10 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
SPU · 107 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

MeasureBolognaZadar
Official languageItalianCroatian
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 m5 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsZadar Airport (ZAD)10 km from centre67 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaZadar
City population387,97170,779
People per km²2,754–
Museums within 10 km661
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre6217
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 Zadar 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.