Avignon or La Spezia?

If swimming matters, La Spezia is clearly better. It has no beach in town, but the sheltered sand-and-pebble strips at San Terenzo and Lerici and the clear rocky water off Portovenere and Palmaria are short trips away. Monterosso's long beach is a train ride up the coast. Be ready for pebbles, paid bathing establishments and full free stretches in August.

Avignon is a long way from the sea. The usual summer swim is in the green pools of the Gardon below the Pont du Gard. The Camargue sands and Le Grau-du-Roi make a day out rather than a daily habit, so a pool where you stay matters much more here.

The food is about equally good in both, but the menus are very different. Avignon cooks rich Provençal dishes like daube, tians and herbed lamb. It also has a better wine region on the doorstep, with Châteauneuf-du-Pape and the Côtes du Rhône poured by the glass, and Les Halles is the place to graze at lunchtime.

La Spezia's food is simpler and comes from the sea and the street. You'll find farinata from wood ovens, gulf mussels, pesto on trofie and focaccia at breakfast, with crisp Cinque Terre whites to drink. Neither town has much international food or fine dining.

Avignon is far ahead here. The Palais des Papes, the cathedral, the Pont Saint-Bénezet and almost 4km of ramparts make up a UNESCO-listed medieval centre. The Petit Palais and the Collection Lambert add serious art inside the walls.

La Spezia was built as a nineteenth-century naval base, with arcades and Liberty facades rather than a historic core. The Museo Amedeo Lia and the stele statues in the Castello San Giorgio are worth a morning, but most of the region's heritage lies out along the coast.

Both towns are quiet at night, and the difference is mostly about season. For most of the year, Avignon's evenings mean an aperitif on Place Pie and a few student bars. In July the festival keeps the squares full until the small hours.

La Spezia's evening is the aperitivo along Via del Prione and the seafront. In summer the crowd moves to the waterfront at Lerici, and most people go to bed early before a day on the trails.

Both have fine scenery, but La Spezia has the edge because it starts at the station. The Cinque Terre's terraced cliffs and coastal and ridge paths are minutes away, as are the forts and sea caves on Palmaria. The gulf is good for kayaking and diving, and the Apuan Alps are about an hour inland.

Avignon's landscapes are bigger and more spread out. There's the bare summit of Mont Ventoux for cyclists, the Luberon's ochre trails, the Alpilles crags and the lagoons and flamingos of the Camargue. Apart from riverside cycling on the Île de la Barthelasse, most of it means driving.

Both make outstanding bases, Avignon by a narrow margin, and the real difference is in what you come home having seen. Around Avignon the outings span two thousand years. There's the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, one of the best-preserved Roman temples anywhere, Orange's theatre with its stage wall still standing and the great aqueduct of the Pont du Gard. Then come Van Gogh's Arles and the ruined fortress of Les Baux. Add tastings in Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Gigondas, antiques at L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and the ochre lanes of Roussillon, and you could fill a fortnight without repeating yourself.

La Spezia's outings follow the shoreline. Beyond the Cinque Terre villages there's Portovenere, with its tall painted harbour houses and the church of San Pietro on the rocks, little Tellaro on its point and Portofino further along the Riviera. For history and stone, there's Sarzana's fortress, the Roman ruins at Luni, the white marble quarries of Carrara and the walls and towers of Pisa and Lucca. Florence is a stretch for a single day.

Neither town is built for children, and the family days out are mostly outside town in both cases. In Avignon, children enjoy the tablet tour of the palace and dancing on the bridge from the song. The bigger outings are canoeing at the Pont du Gard and seeing the Camargue's horses, both by car, and the cobbled lanes are hard work with a pushchair.

La Spezia is flatter and easier with a buggy, and its best family days are on the water. There are boat trips around Portovenere and shallow beaches at San Terenzo. Steep villages and crowded trains suit older children better than toddlers.

You can walk the centre of either town, but La Spezia is easier to get out of without a car. Coastal trains, buses around the gulf and seasonal ferries reach almost everything a visitor wants, and driving into the villages is more trouble than it's worth. The weak spot is the packed summer platforms.

Inside Avignon's walls everything is within a short walk. The trains to Arles, Nîmes and Marseille are good, but the vineyards, the hill villages and Ventoux really need a hire car.

Shopping is modest in both towns. In Avignon, the lanes around Rue des Marchands and Rue Joseph Vernet sell printed Provençal cottons, lavender and olive wood, and serious antique hunters drive out to L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. For edible souvenirs, buy tapenade, calissons and wine at Les Halles or straight from the producers.

La Spezia has everyday chains along Via del Prione and not much in the way of crafts, although Carrara marble pieces are sold in the towns nearby. Here the best things to take home are edible: pesto, Sciacchetrà and Monterosso anchovies.

La Spezia is a little easier on the budget. Farinata and trattoria meals are cheap, local trains are inexpensive, and rooms cost less than in the Cinque Terre villages. Trail passes and paid beaches do add up.

Avignon's bistro lunches and producer wines are fair value. In July, though, the festival pushes room rates inside the walls up steeply, and exploring the countryside usually means paying for a hire car.

Avignon is in a different league, at least in July. The festival, running since 1947, puts its biggest productions on the open-air stage of the papal palace courtyard and in cloisters and quarries nearby. Meanwhile the Off fringe crams well over a thousand shows a day into almost any room that can seat an audience. Outside the festival, the Opéra Grand Avignon, a cluster of small year-round theatres and a jazz club with music most weeks still give it more to see than La Spezia.

La Spezia's calendar is thinner. The Teatro Civico has a season of plays, touring shows and concerts, and Sarzana's small Teatro degli Impavidi adds a few more. Summer brings a long-running jazz festival and open-air concerts in piazzas and castle courtyards around the gulf. For opera, you'd have to go to Genoa or Pisa.

Neither town has a spa tradition, so relaxing here is about the pace rather than treatments. Avignon offers shaded plane-tree squares, long lunches and farmhouse stays with a pool among the vineyards, but July and a days-long mistral can wear you out.

La Spezia's calm comes from the water. There are off-season walks along the seafront, quiet days on Palmaria and lunches in Tellaro. The small thermal baths at Equi Terme are about an hour inland.