Avignon or Basel?

Neither city has a beach, but Basel's swimming is right in town. In summer you can walk up the Kleinbasel bank and float back past the old town on the Rhine's current, though only confident swimmers should try it.

The Rhône at Avignon is no place to swim. The nearest good dip is in the Gardon pools below the Pont du Gard, half an hour by car, and the Camargue sands are a full day out. Most days that leaves the hotel pool.

Avignon gives you more reason to travel for the food. There is Provençal cooking built on produce from the surrounding plain, the stalls and lunch counters of Les Halles, and Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Côtes du Rhône wines poured by the glass in the side-street bistros.

Basel cooks well but has few dishes of its own. It borrows tarte flambée from Alsace and wine from Baden, and everyday meals can feel expensive for what you get. Its best casual eating is at the Markthalle and the Marktplatz market.

The two are level, but the culture is of a different kind. Avignon's strength is one great medieval ensemble: the papal palace, the cathedral, the broken bridge and nearly 4km of ramparts, with the Petit Palais and Calvet museums nearby. Two days covers it.

Basel is a city of art collections. The Kunstmuseum's Holbeins, the Fondation Beyeler and the Vitra campus over the German border are the highlights, set among guild houses and modern buildings by Herzog & de Meuron. Allow three or four days.

Neither city is a place for big nights out, but Basel has a little more going on. In summer people drink on the Kleinbasel riverside steps late into the night, there are bars around the Kaserne, and a few clubs in old harbour buildings play electronic music at weekends. Fasnacht turns the city upside down for three days in late winter.

Avignon's evenings are aperitifs on Place Pie, and the town is quiet by midnight. The exception is July, when festival crowds fill the squares until the small hours.

Avignon's surroundings are wilder and more varied. Mont Ventoux's bare summit, the Luberon's ochre trails, the crags of the Alpilles and the Camargue's flamingos and white horses all lie within about an hour. Spring and autumn are the times to go, because summer heat and the mistral can be hard going.

Basel's country is greener and gentler. There are wooded walks in the Jura, the Black Forest and the Vosges, easy cycling on the Rhine paths, and some light skiing in winter.

Both cities make outstanding bases, and Avignon has a slight edge in what lies close by. The Roman arenas of Nîmes and Arles, the theatre at Orange and the Pont du Gard are all within half an hour. The Luberon villages and the wine country are close too, though you will want a car for those.

Basel's day trips cover three countries and need no car. Fast trains reach Colmar and the Alsace wine villages, Freiburg, Lucerne and Bern, with Augusta Raurica only a quarter of an hour away.

Basel is much easier with children. The Zolli is a short walk from the station, the Natural History and toy museums cover a rainy morning, and Europa-Park is an hour's drive away. The city is calm and clean, and the trams take pushchairs without fuss.

In Avignon, children will enjoy the tablet tour of the palace and dancing on the bridge from the song. After that, the family days out are canoeing at the Pont du Gard or a trip to the Camargue, and both need a car.

Basel is the easier city to get around. Its green trams cover the city, hotel guests ride them for free, and some lines cross into France and Germany. Direct trains from the main station take care of nearly every outing.

Avignon's walled centre is easy on foot, and regional trains reach Arles, Nîmes and Orange. Getting to the hill villages, the vineyards and Ventoux, though, realistically means hiring a car.

Basel has a slightly better range of shops. Freie Strasse and Gerbergasse have Swiss watch and jewellery shops and chocolatiers, the lanes around Spalenberg hide small design shops, and the Christmas market by the Münster is a pretty one.

Avignon's shops lean towards Provençal cottons, lavender, olive wood and things to eat from Les Halles. Serious antiques hunters head out to L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.

This is where the two differ most. Avignon is a mid-priced French town with fair bistro lunches and cheap local wine. The catches are steep room rates during the July festival and the cost of a hire car for the countryside.

Basel is very expensive for rooms, meals, drinks and museums alike, and rooms get scarce during Art Basel. Free trams help, and so does staying or eating across the border in France or Germany.

Avignon comes out ahead, mostly because of July. For three weeks the Festival d'Avignon stages major productions in the Cour d'honneur of the papal palace, and the Off fringe fills every cellar, chapel and courtyard in town with shows from morning to night. The rest of the year is calmer but still well supplied for a town this size: opera and ballet at the Opéra Grand Avignon on Place de l'Horloge, a dozen or so small permanent theatres and a well-regarded jazz club.

Basel's calendar runs the other way. Its season lasts from autumn to early summer. In those months Theater Basel puts on bold opera, ballet and drama, the Sinfonieorchester Basel plays at the Stadtcasino, and early-music concerts fill out the programme. In July and August, just when Avignon is at its busiest, Basel's stages go quiet and the city's evenings move to the river.

Basel is better for unwinding. The saline thermal baths at Rheinfelden are twenty minutes away, the mineral pools and saunas of Badenweiler and Bad Krozingen are just over the German border, and quiet Sundays set an easy pace.

Avignon has no bathing tradition beyond hotel spas. Its version of rest is a long lunch under the plane trees or a farmhouse guesthouse among the vineyards, away from July's crowds and the mistral.