Avignon or Nice?

This is where the two part company most. Nice has 7km of clear water right in front of the city, plus sandier bays at Villefranche, Beaulieu and Antibes within easy reach by train. The one catch is the pebbles, so loungers or water shoes make the stones more comfortable.

Avignon has nothing comparable. On hot afternoons people swim in the green river pools of the Gardon near the Pont du Gard. The Camargue sands are a full day out by car, not a daily habit.

Both cities cook Provençal food, but Nice has a cuisine of its own. Socca from wood ovens, pissaladière and pan bagnat give it street food that Avignon lacks, and the cheap family places in Vieux Nice and around the port make eating out more rewarding day to day.

Avignon's strength is in the glass. Châteauneuf-du-Pape and the Côtes du Rhône are right on its doorstep, and the counters inside Les Halles serve market-fresh lunches. In both cities, avoid the main tourist squares and eat in the side streets.

Both repay two or three days of sightseeing, but in different ways. Avignon is built around a single monumental ensemble: the vast Gothic papal palace, the broken bridge and almost 4km of medieval walls, with the Petit Palais holding Italian primitives.

Nice spreads its interest across the city instead. There is the Italianate old town, the Belle Époque villas and the Russian cathedral, and its real draw is modern art, with the Matisse and Chagall museums and MAMAC. Choose Avignon for medieval history, Nice for twentieth-century painting.

Nice gives you more of an evening. The lanes of Vieux Nice fill with wine bars and cocktail bars, the port has quieter places for a drink, and in summer people stay out late at the beach clubs. Clubs are few in either city.

Avignon is mostly in bed by midnight, apart from one exception. In July the festival keeps its squares full until the small hours, and that is livelier than anything Nice offers outside its summer season.

Nice has the wider range because the Alps come right down to the sea. You get coastal paths around Cap Ferrat, the red rocks of the Esterel, high lakes in the Mercantour, and in winter skiing at Isola 2000 within about an hour and a half, plus diving and kayaking offshore.

Avignon's countryside is gentler but still first-rate. Cyclists come for Mont Ventoux, and there are the Luberon's ochre trails, canoeing down the Gardon, and flamingos and white horses in the Camargue. Expect strong summer heat and days of mistral.

Avignon's excursions are about Roman stone and wine country. The arena and Maison Carrée at Nîmes, the arena and cloister at Arles, the theatre at Orange and the Pont du Gard all lie within about half an hour, and Aix and Marseille are a short high-speed train ride away. Beyond them are Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas and the Luberon villages of Gordes and Roussillon, which are only really practical with a car.

From Nice, the outings are a run of coastal towns along one railway: Villefranche, Monaco, Menton, Antibes and Cannes, with Èze on its rock and Sanremo over the Italian border. Most take under an hour and none needs a car. The list has more sea views and less ancient history than Avignon's.

Nice is easier with children. The flat promenade suits pushchairs and bikes, the Promenade du Paillon has water jets and big playgrounds, Parc Phoenix has animals, and swimming is right there, even if the pebbles are hard on small feet.

In Avignon, the palace's tablet tour and dancing on the bridge from the song will fill a morning. After that, the best family days are out of town at the Pont du Gard or in the Camargue, and you need a car to reach them.

Both centres are easy to walk, but Nice reaches further without a car. Trams run straight from the airport to the centre, buses climb to the Cimiez museums, and the coastal railway links the whole Riviera. You only need a car for the mountains.

Avignon's walled centre is compact, and regional trains run easily to Arles, Nîmes and Marseille. The vineyards, the hill villages and Ventoux have few buses, though, so a hire car is part of most stays.

Nice has more choice. There are department stores on Avenue Jean Médecin, luxury houses around rue Paradis, and a Monday antiques market on the Cours Saleya. It is still browsing rather than a shopping trip in its own right.

Avignon's shops are smaller and more local: printed cottons, olive wood and lavender in the lanes off Rue Joseph Vernet. Serious antiques hunters drive out to L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.

Avignon is the cheaper of the two, apart from festival July, when rooms inside the walls are booked up and expensive. In spring and autumn it is a fairly priced provincial town, though a hire car adds to the bill.

Nice costs more, especially for sea-view rooms and private beach loungers from June to September. It makes some of that back with cheap trams and trains and with socca and market picnics.

For three weeks of the year, Avignon is one of the great theatre towns. The Festival stages productions in the Cour d'honneur of the papal palace, and the fringe runs well over a thousand shows a day in every courtyard and cellar. The rest of the year, its opera house and small theatres stay busy for a town of its size.

Nice offers a steadier regional calendar. There is the opera house near the old town, the jazz festival every July and the February Carnival, but it is not a reason to choose the city.

Neither city has a bathing tradition, so a spa visit means a hotel or a day spa in both. The difference is in how you unwind. In Nice it is an early swim, a seafront thalassotherapy centre and an evening walk along the bay.

In Avignon, rest tends to mean leaving town for a farmhouse guesthouse with a pool among the vines. In both places, avoid high summer if calm is the aim.