Annecy or Pisa?

Both give you summer swimming, but in very different water. Annecy has a clear, clean lake, and you swim from grassy lawns with short shingle strips and jetties at Albigny, the Marquisats and the shore villages. Pisa has the open sea, with long sandy beaches backed by pines at Tirrenia and Calambrone, rocky coves at Marina di Pisa, and mostly rented loungers and umbrellas.

Pisa's sea is a touch warmer and its shallows are easy for paddling, though the water near the river mouth is rarely clear. Annecy's water is much clearer, but the swimming season there is shorter.

The two eat about equally well, but in different ways. Annecy cooks hearty Savoyard mountain food, with tartiflette, fondue and raclette made from valley cheeses, plus féra fished from the lake. Its best food moments are the old-town markets and the gastronomic tables in lakeside villages such as Talloires.

Pisa's food is plain Tuscan cooking: ribollita, wild boar and the hot chickpea cecina from wood ovens, eaten in the trattorias around Piazza delle Vettovaglie. In summer, Pisa's food suits the season better than melted cheese does. In both places, avoid the menus beside the main sight.

Pisa has far more to see. The cathedral, baptistery, tower and Camposanto stand together on one lawn and make one of Italy's great architectural ensembles. Beyond them are Vasari's palace on Piazza dei Cavalieri, the Gothic Santa Maria della Spina and medieval painting in the San Matteo museum.

Annecy's charm is the old town itself: the canals, the Palais de l'Isle on its island and the castle museum above. It is lovely to walk around, but a single day covers it.

Neither is a place to go out late, but Pisa has more going on. During term, students fill the small squares around the old market until past midnight, and in summer the evenings move to the beach bars. Annecy's evenings are a drink on a canal terrace or a glass of wine by the lake. Outside summer it is quiet by midnight, and for real clubbing you would go to Geneva or Lyon.

This is where Annecy is strongest. You can walk from town up to Mont Veyrier, spend whole days in the mountains on the Tournette, paraglide from one of Europe's great launch sites above Talloires and paddle the lake. In winter, the Aravis ski resorts are under an hour away.

Pisa's outdoors is flatter and calmer: deer in the pinewoods and dunes of San Rossore, birdwatching on Lake Massaciuccoli and olive-terrace paths on the Monte Pisano. Real mountain walking means the Apuan Alps or the Cinque Terre, further out.

Both make good bases, and Pisa's range is exceptional. Florence is an hour away by train, Lucca under half an hour, the Cinque Terre a little over an hour, and Volterra, San Gimignano and Siena can all be reached in a day.

From Annecy, Geneva, Chambéry, Aix-les-Bains and Chamonix make solid outings, and Lyon is a long but worthwhile day. They are fewer, and several are easier by car.

Annecy is the easier of the two for children, mostly because of summer on the lake. Pedal boats, cruises, the flat shore cycle path, the Pâquier lawns and mountain toboggan runs give plenty to do, although neither town has a zoo or theme park.

In Pisa, children enjoy the tower lawn, the photo pretending to hold the tower up, the shallow beaches at Tirrenia and riding in San Rossore. Younger children cannot climb the tower, and the midsummer heat makes days harder.

Both centres are easy to walk, but Pisa is the one where you can manage without a car. An automatic shuttle train links its unusually close airport to the station, and that station serves much of western Tuscany.

In Annecy you can walk the town, cycle the shore path and take lake boats in summer. Trailheads, mountain passes and Chamonix are far simpler by car, though, and summer traffic around the lake can be slow.

Neither is a shopping destination, and serious shoppers leave both, for Geneva or for Florence and Lucca. What differs is what you bring home. In Annecy, that means Savoyard cheese, sausage, génépi and kitchen knives from the market and the streets around Rue Sainte-Claire. In Pisa, it means mid-range fashion on Corso Italia, shoes and old pastry shops under the Borgo Stretto arcades, and the monthly antiques market along the river.

Pisa is clearly the cheaper stay. Central rooms are mid-range, the student trattorias are good value and walking costs nothing. The main expenses are the tower climb and summer beach loungers.

Annecy charges resort prices all year, helped by wealthy Geneva next door. Its best things are free, though, including the lake beaches, the trails and the cycle path, and self-catering in the shoulder seasons brings costs down.

Annecy's stage is contemporary and Pisa's is operatic. Bonlieu, the national stage by the lake, programmes modern theatre, dance and circus, and in summer adds a classical festival and the Fête du Lac fireworks over the water.

Pisa's Teatro Verdi, a horseshoe-shaped nineteenth-century house, gives an unpretentious night of Italian opera, ballet and symphonic concerts from autumn to spring, with chamber recitals in churches and university halls. For bigger productions you would go to Geneva or Lyon from Annecy, or to Florence from Pisa.

In Annecy the spas are in hotels, several in quiet lakeside spots around Talloires and Veyrier, and real thermal bathing means a trip to Aix-les-Bains or to Saint-Gervais under Mont Blanc. The calm comes mainly from lake mornings and slow lunches, and it thins out in July and August.

Pisa has Roman-era springs on its doorstep at San Giuliano Terme, where an eighteenth-century bath palace below the Monte Pisano houses a spa, and a larger public thermal pool at Casciana Terme further inland. In town, the quiet is in the river evenings away from the cathedral square.