Amalfi or Bologna?

Amalfi is the one for swimming. Marina Grande is pebbly and lined with beach-club loungers in summer, but the sea is clear, Atrani and coves such as Santa Croce are close, and a hired boat opens up rocks and grottoes the road never reaches.

Bologna is inland, so the sea means an hour on the train to Rimini or Cervia. There the Adriatic is warm and shallow but lined with organised lidos, and the water is often greenish. It works as a day's escape from the city heat, not as a beach vacation.

Bologna is the far better place to eat. It is the home of tagliatelle al ragù, tortellini in brodo and mortadella, with hand-rolled pasta, old osterie and the market lanes of the Quadrilatero, and the Parmigiano and balsamic producers are less than an hour away.

Amalfi has its own coastal kitchen of sfusato lemons, anchovies, colatura and scialatielli with seafood, but the town is small and much of the cooking on the piazza is for passing crowds. In Amalfi you have to seek out the careful trattorias. In Bologna they are the norm.

Amalfi's heritage fits into half a day: the striped Duomo with its bronze doors from Constantinople and the crypt of St Andrew, the Chiostro del Paradiso, the old Arsenale and the paper museum up the valley.

Bologna needs two or three days. It has a whole brick medieval centre with close to 40km of UNESCO-listed porticoes, plus San Petronio, the Two Towers, Santo Stefano, the anatomical theatre in the Archiginnasio and the Bolognese painting in the Pinacoteca. That makes it a culture trip in its own right.

Amalfi goes quiet once the last ferries and buses leave, and a late night means a wine or cocktail bar near the harbour at most. Bologna's students keep Piazza Verdi, Via Petroni and Via del Pratello busy until late, and aperitivo around the Quadrilatero leads on to wine bars. The tone is casual rather than polished, and it fades in August when the university empties.

Amalfi's setting is the reason most people go. The Lattari mountains drop into the sea, lemon terraces and mule stairways link the cliff villages, and the Sentiero degli Dei is among the great coastal walks in Europe. Sea caves such as the Emerald Grotto add a side you explore by water.

Bologna's outdoors is milder. The Colli Bolognesi and the gypsum caves of the Parco dei Gessi are close, the Via degli Dei leaves Piazza Maggiore for Florence, and Corno alle Scale offers summer hiking. North of the city the land flattens into farmland, fine for cycling but plain.

Both are excellent bases, but Bologna's rail junction gives it the wider and steadier reach. Florence is barely half an hour away, Ravenna, Ferrara, Modena and Parma are easy hops, and Venice, Verona and Padua all fit into a day, in any season.

Amalfi's outings are famous ones: Ravello, Positano, Capri, Paestum and Pompeii. Getting to them depends on ferries that run mainly from spring to autumn and on a slow coast road that clogs in summer.

Neither city is built around children, but Bologna is much easier. Its centre is flat, mostly free of traffic and shaded by porticoes, and a day at Mirabilandia or on Rimini's beaches is within reach.

Amalfi's steep stairways defeat pushchairs, its pebble beach is crowded and the winding cliff buses can make children sick. Older children who swim well will love the boats and sea caves, but toddlers are better off elsewhere.

Amalfi has to be climbed, while Bologna's centre is flat, and Bologna is much the easier of the two to get around. In Amalfi the main street soon turns into stairways and covered steps. In summer the blue buses fill up and pass waiting queues, and the ferries to Positano and Capri run only from spring to autumn. Anyone with limited mobility will struggle once they leave the seafront.

Bologna's old town is compact and largely closed to private cars, and the porticoes keep you in shade or out of the rain as you cross it on foot. There is no metro, but buses reach the hills and the airport. The central station sits at the edge of the old town, a short walk from most hotels. Watch for the many bikes under the arches.

Amalfi's shopping is one main street of limoncello, lemon soaps and painted ceramics, and much of the stock repeats from shop to shop. The things worth taking home are the cotton paper still made in the valley, hand-painted majolica and sandals made to measure.

Bologna gives you more to browse, though food is still what most visitors take home: mortadella, aged Parmigiano and fresh tortellini from the Quadrilatero delicatessens. Via dell'Indipendenza has the Italian chains, and Via Farini and the Galleria Cavour have a small cluster of luxury fashion. The Montagnola market, the weekend antiques market on Piazza Santo Stefano and the vintage shops and bookshops of the university quarter make up the rest.

Amalfi is among the dearest places to stay in Italy. Sea-view rooms, meals on the piazza, loungers and boat hire are all expensive, and only the local buses are cheap. Staying in the hill villages in spring or autumn helps.

Bologna is mid-priced. Rooms in the old town still cost what northern Italy charges, and more during trade fairs. Trattoria meals, aperitivo and free-to-enter churches keep day-to-day spending well below Amalfi's.

For live performance Bologna is clearly the better choice, because its music runs through the whole year, while Amalfi's comes down to a single summer festival up the hill. In Amalfi itself an evening out means a church concert or the processions and brass bands of the Sant'Andrea feast. The real draw is the Ravello Festival a short ride above town, where orchestral and chamber music on the Villa Rufolo terrace, with the sea far below, makes one concert memorable. But it is a summer season, not a scene you can count on.

Bologna doesn't depend on the calendar. Opera at the Teatro Comunale, jazz in small basement clubs and student gigs mean there is something to hear on most nights, and in summer the concerts move outdoors into Piazza Maggiore. Theatre is mostly in Italian, so visitors will get more from the music than from the stage.

Neither has a bathing tradition of its own, but Bologna has thermal springs within reach. Castel San Pietro Terme is about twenty minutes away, and Porretta Terme lies in a green Apennine valley. Amalfi's spas sit mostly in cliff hotels and are mainly for their own guests, so the calm there comes from swims, long lunches and quiet mornings in May or October rather than from treatments.