Agadir or Essaouira?

Agadir is the real beach destination of the two. Its sheltered bay has close to 10km of sand in front of the promenade, the water near town is usually calm enough to swim in, and there are lifeguards in season. Surf beaches such as Tamraght and Taghazout lie a short way up the coast.

Essaouira's beach is just as wide and starts right at the medina walls. From spring to late summer, though, the trade wind blows across it, and it becomes a place for walking, horse riding and watching kites. Swimming is limited to calm mornings and the corner by the port, and Sidi Kaouki to the south is wilder, not gentler.

The best meal in both towns is grilled fish at the port, chosen from the day's catch and eaten at shared tables, with argan oil and amlou from the countryside around. Agadir has a little more range. Souk El Had is a huge produce market, the Souss is known for slow-cooked Amazigh tagines, and the resort strip, though uneven, has more hotels and licensed restaurants serving international food and alcohol.

Essaouira's food is narrower: Moroccan home cooking such as fish tagine and Friday couscous, mint tea in the squares, and a small group of riad dining rooms. Very few places serve alcohol.

Here Essaouira is clearly the richer stop. The whole medina was laid out in the 18th century and is listed by UNESCO as a fortified port: a grid of whitewashed houses with blue shutters inside sea walls. Cannons line the Skala ramparts, and the old mellah recalls the town's Jewish trading past. A day or two covers it, but all of that time is spent in real historic streets.

Agadir lost almost everything in the 1960 earthquake, and the city that replaced it is modern and planned. The kasbah walls on Agadir Oufella are worth the climb mainly for the view, and the Medina Polizzi is a modern reconstruction. For real heritage you have to travel out to Taroudant or Tiznit.

Neither is a party town, but Agadir at least has a night out to offer. Its hotel bars, few nightclubs, marina lounges and beach clubs with music at sunset can stay open late in summer and around European school breaks.

Essaouira has no clubs to speak of. There are rooftop terraces at sunset, some riad bars and a couple of beach bars where surfers and kitesurfers gather. The medina is quiet well before midnight, and most evenings end with a walk on the ramparts.

Agadir has the bigger and more varied outdoors, because it sits where the High Atlas meets the sea. Paradise Valley, a palm-filled gorge with rock pools, is about an hour inland, and the point breaks of Taghazout and Imsouane draw surfers. Souss-Massa National Park shelters the rare northern bald ibis, and the Anti-Atlas has trekking.

Essaouira's landscape is gentler and flatter, with argan hills, dunes towards Diabat and Eleonora's falcons on the islands off the bay, and no mountains nearby. Its strength is the wind, and for kitesurfing and windsurfing it is the better of the two.

Agadir is better placed for days out. Taroudant, with its ochre earthen ramparts and calm souks, is about an hour and a half inland. Tiznit, another walled town, lies to the south, and the surf villages up the coast make easy half days.

Essaouira is more isolated, and its outings are small: the woodcarving workshops at Ghazoua, the argan cooperatives, the fort ruins near Diabat half buried in sand, and Sidi Kaouki. Safi's pottery quarter is about two hours up the coast. From either town, Marrakech is around three hours away and works better as an overnight stop than a day trip.

Agadir is built for family beach time. It has a calm, sandy bay, a flat promenade for buggies and scooters, and all-inclusive hotels with pools and kids' clubs. The crocodile park and the Vallée des Oiseaux fill a couple of afternoons.

Essaouira appeals to children in a different way, with camels on the sand, fishing boats in the port and a small medina that is mostly free of cars. But there is nothing built for children, and the cool sea and summer wind make beach days harder for small ones. Many riads also have steep stairs and open roof terraces.

Essaouira is the easier town to manage without transport. The flat, mostly car-free medina, the port and the beach promenade are all within about twenty minutes' walk of each other, and porters with hand carts take your luggage to the riad.

In Agadir only the beachfront promenade is walkable. The souk, the kasbah hill and the port are spread out, so you rely on the orange petit taxis. For anything further, both towns need a grand taxi or a hired car, and driving around Agadir is fairly straightforward once you are out of the city.

Essaouira has the more distinctive shopping. Thuya-wood boxes and inlaid trays are made in workshops under the ramparts, and small galleries sell naive and gnawa-inspired paintings that are hard to find anywhere else in Morocco. The souk lanes are calm and easy to browse.

Agadir's Souk El Had is bigger and more of a working market, where locals buy produce and household goods and visitors find rugs and Amazigh silver. Beyond it there are seafront souvenir shops and a mall. In both towns, argan oil from the women's cooperatives is the thing to take home.

Both towns are cheap for European visitors, with grilled fish at the port, low taxi fares and little to pay for sightseeing. What differs is where the savings are. In Agadir they are in off-season beach hotels and all-inclusive packages, while the seafront strip and alcohol cost more.

In Essaouira the good value is in riad rooms outside summer and the festival weekends, and the medina and ramparts are free to wander. The smarter rooftop restaurants and anywhere serving alcohol charge more than in an ordinary Moroccan town.

Essaouira has the stronger musical identity as the home of gnawa, the trance music of Morocco's Afro-Moroccan brotherhoods. Its Gnaoua World Music Festival brings gnawa masters and jazz musicians together on free stages, and the rest of the year you can still hear the music informally in squares and restaurants.

Agadir has the Timitar festival of Amazigh music in summer. Outside it, live performance mostly means hotel entertainment and folk shows put on for visitors. Neither town has a theatre or an opera.

Both suit a slow vacation, and both offer the black-soap hammam scrub followed by an argan-oil massage. For simply slowing down, Essaouira has the edge. The medina has no traffic, and days go on long riad breakfasts, books and sunsets on the ramparts, though the wind can make lounging outdoors less restful.

Agadir's calm comes from the resort. It has hotel spas, seawater thalassotherapy centres along the bay and an easy rhythm of sun and walks on the promenade, with yoga and surf retreats up the coast.