Antibes or Pisa?

Antibes is the stronger beach destination by some way. Its sand is right in town at La Salis and Juan-les-Pins, the water off Cap d'Antibes is very clear, and the cape's coves and flat rocks give a second, quieter way to swim. Private clubs take much of the sand, but there are public stretches between them.

Pisa's coast starts about 12km from the centre. Tirrenia and Calambrone have wide sandy beaches backed by pine woods and shallow water for paddling, but the sea near the Arno mouth is rarely clear. Most visitors take the bus out for an afternoon between sights.

Both are good places for simple regional food rather than serious dining, and each is built around a morning market. In Antibes that is the covered Provençal market on Cours Masséna, with Niçoise socca, pissaladière and grilled fish eaten with rosé outdoors.

Pisa's market at Piazza delle Vettovaglie is ringed by trattorias and wine bars that feed students, which keeps the cooking honest: ribollita, game, salt cod and hot cecina. In both places, avoid the tourist menus near the main sights.

Pisa has much more to see. The Piazza dei Miracoli alone, with its marble cathedral, baptistery, climbable tower and frescoed Camposanto, outweighs Antibes. Behind it are Piazza dei Cavalieri, the little Gothic Santa Maria della Spina and medieval art at San Matteo.

Antibes rests mainly on the Picasso Museum in the Château Grimaldi, where the works he made in 1946 still hang above the sea. Add the ramparts, the star-shaped Fort Carré and the cape's villa and chapel, and it makes a pleasant short visit rather than a reason to travel.

Summer beach bars by the sand and student-filled squares in term time make for two quite different evenings. In July and August, Juan-les-Pins stays up late, with lounges on the shore and a few clubs open into the small hours, while the lanes near Port Vauban have English-speaking pubs and wine bars full of yacht crews. Out of season much of it shuts, and a bigger night out means the train to Nice.\n\nIn Pisa the crowd is younger and the setting is a piazza.

During the university year, people stand drinking outside small bars and wine shops around the old market until well past midnight, and the arcades of Borgo Stretto fill for aperitivo in the early evening. There are hardly any clubs, the streets round the tower empty after dark, and once the students leave for the vacation the evenings end quietly.

Antibes has the edge for the outdoors, mainly because of the sea. The cape path over wind-carved limestone, snorkelling and diving in clear water, and sailing in the bay are all on the doorstep. The red Esterel cliffs and the Gorges du Loup are within an hour.

Pisa's great asset is the San Rossore park, with pine forest, wetland, wild dunes and fallow deer, best explored by bike or on horseback. The olive terraces of Monte Pisano and the Apuan Alps give more serious walking further out.

Both are excellent bases, and the difference is the kind of place you reach. From Antibes, the coastal line strings together Nice, Cannes, Monaco and Menton, with Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Eze and Grasse in the hills and boats out to the Lérins Islands.

From Pisa, the trips are about art cities and old towns: Florence and the Uffizi within an hour, walled Lucca closer still, the Cinque Terre a little further north, and Volterra, San Gimignano and Siena by car.

Families will find both manageable rather than geared to children, and the draw differs. In Antibes it is the sandy, gently shelving beach in town, safer for small children than the Riviera's pebbles, with boats in the port and the ramparts between swims. In Pisa it is the tower photo on the lawn, a climb for older children, and days at the shallow beaches of Tirrenia or cycling in San Rossore.

Pisa is the easier place to get around. The whole centre is a flat walk from the station, the airport is linked by a shuttle train, and the station is a hub for western Tuscany, so most trips need no car.

Antibes has a walkable old town and a good coastal railway. However, the cape and the hill villages are served only by slow buses, and summer traffic and parking on the coast road are hard work.

Neither is a shopping destination, and both send serious shoppers elsewhere: Antibes to Cannes and Nice, Pisa to Florence and Lucca. Antibes is better for Provençal goods, such as olive oil, soaps and linens from the market and old-town boutiques, with Biot glass nearby. Pisa offers ordinary Italian fashion on Corso Italia and the arcades of Borgo Stretto, plus a monthly antiques market by the river.

Pisa is noticeably cheaper. Central rooms are mid-range, student trattorias are good value and walking costs nothing. The main extra costs are the tower climb and the cafés beside the monuments.

Antibes in high summer charges luxury-resort rates for rooms near the beaches and on the cape, and loungers and seafront terraces add up. Spring or autumn visits and picnics from the market bring it closer to reasonable.

Both have modest stages, but of different kinds. Antibes has one famous event, Jazz à Juan, held each July under the pines by the sea since 1960, and a fairly quiet year otherwise. Pisa offers a steady autumn-to-spring season of opera, concerts and ballet at the horseshoe-shaped Teatro Verdi, and has no comparable festival.

Neither has an everyday bathing culture, so the difference is in what lies nearby. Antibes offers seawater thalassotherapy and grand-hotel spas on the cape. Pisa has the Roman-era thermal springs of San Giuliano Terme in an 18th-century bath palace and the public pool at Casciana Terme. Pisa's small scale also keeps it calm, while Antibes is restful mainly outside July and August.