VacationSelector

Bologna or Zagreb?

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 good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Zagreb
47
match

Wins on value for money and nightlife 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 museums, a walkable centre with attractions close together and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, plus warmer, drier summers.

Choose Zagreb if the evening matters more than the daytime: more bars and about twice as many nightclubs, a wider range of kitchens, and you accept wetter months and a summer that tops out near 29°C.

Scoreboard

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

BolognaZagreb
Beaches & swimming. Bologna and Zagreb are level on 0.
BolognaZagreb
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km28
Coast distance74 km117 km
Water distance——
Places to eat. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
BolognaZagreb
Score5852
Restaurants within 2 km of centre822374
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2027
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 22 points.22
BolognaZagreb
Score6745
Museums within 10 km5841
Museums within 2 km of centre4340
Share of museums within 2 km %7498
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Zagreb leads by 8 points.8
BolognaZagreb
Score5361
Drinking venues within 4 km7201,009
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531571
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7457
Nightclubs within 4 km3063
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 5 points.5
BolognaZagreb
Score3934
Protected land share 50 km %79
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km119 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 27 points.27
BolognaZagreb
Score5528
Tourist attractions within 2 km327
Park area within 2 km119 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km00
Sights concentration. Bologna and Zagreb are level on 60.
BolognaZagreb
Score6060
Notable places within 2 km120122
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Zagreb leads by 12 points.12
BolognaZagreb
Score6880
Price level global64.948.5
Daily budget€155€138
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 5 points.5
BolognaZagreb
Score6762
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C5.4 °C to 28.5 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm47 mm to 104 mm
Dry months50
0255075100

Where they differ

Bologna has about twice as many restaurants near the centre, somewhat more museums, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Zagreb has none. For families it is ahead: many times as many attractions near the centre and about twice the park space.

Zagreb has more places to drink and about twice as many nightclubs, though half sit near the centre, where Bologna's are mostly central. Its kitchens span a wider range, 9% of land around it is protected against 7%, and it has 8 nearby beaches to Bologna's 2.

Where they are alike

Both centres are compact in a similar way: each has about as many notable places within walking distance of the middle, so in either city the core can be covered on foot.

Elsewhere they overlap in what they lack. Neither is a swimming destination, with no month of sea reaching 21°C. Protected land nearby is limited in both, 9% around Zagreb and 7% around Bologna, and both give you plenty of choice at the table without one running away with it.

Which traveller are you?

Museum-minded traveller: Bologna. More museums than Zagreb, and 3 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Zagreb has none, so heritage days extend beyond the city itself.

Night-out traveller: Zagreb. More places to drink and about twice as many nightclubs, though half sit away from the centre, so expect some travelling between them. Bologna's are concentrated centrally.

Families: Bologna, by a clear margin. Many times as many attractions near the centre, about twice the park space, and milder winters at 7°C in January. Neither city has a theme park within reach, so the days are city days either way.

What the numbers don't tell you

The daily budget figures, €155 for Italy and €138 for Croatia, are national price levels for restaurants and hotels, not measurements of Bologna or Zagreb. A capital and a heavily visited city can each sit well off their country average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so treat them as background rather than a reason to choose.

The beach count flatters Zagreb: 8 nearby beaches, but neither city has a month of sea at 21°C or more. Zagreb's warmest months are also its wettest, so warm does not mean dry there.

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
Zagreb
5
8
13
18
23
27
29
28
22
17
11
6
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Zagreb
47
48
49
63
76
90
87
85
104
91
88
63
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Zagreb
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
Zagreb
2
4
5
6
8
9
9
9
6
4
2
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). Zagreb: 1991-2020 normals, Zagreb / Gric (0.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bologna's window runs May to September: 24°C in May rising to 32°C in July, with just 34-37mm in June and July. From September the rain sets in, 70-75mm a month through November.

Zagreb peaks in August at 28°C and holds 23-29°C from May to August, so the warmth is there; the rain is what separates them. Its summer months bring 85-90mm, and September 104mm against Bologna's 75mm. Winters are colder, 5-6°C in December and January against Bologna's 7-8°C.

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaZagreb
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 0 m
€153-254
ZAG · 11 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 25 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 50 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 40 m
no fares
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 20 m
€85-160
BLQ · 6 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
DohaDOH
5 h 35 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
5 h 15 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 45 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
ZAG · 11 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBolognaZagreb
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 m127 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsZagreb Franjo Tuđman International Airport (ZAG)11 km from centre60 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaZagreb
City population387,971767,131
People per km²2,754–
Museums within 10 km6627
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre6242

Where else could you go?

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