Avignon or Strasbourg?

Neither city is a beach destination, but Avignon at least has good summer swimming nearby. The green pools and rocky banks of the Gardon are a short drive away, and the Camargue's open sands and the resorts near Le Grau-du-Roi make an easy day trip to the Mediterranean.

Strasbourg has no sea within reach. Swimming there means the lifeguarded gravel-pit lakes such as the Baggersee, which is pleasant on a hot afternoon and reachable by tram, but nothing more.

Strasbourg eats better and more heartily. The winstub is a proper institution, serving choucroute, baeckeoffe and tarte flambée with a pichet of Alsace white, and there is a serious fine-dining scene in the city and the villages around it.

Avignon's Provençal cooking is lighter and sunnier, built around tians, daube, herbs and the stalls of Les Halles, and its real draw is red wine from Châteauneuf-du-Pape. In both cities the tables beside the main sights are the weakest, and food from other cuisines is limited.

These two are evenly matched, but the experience is quite different. Avignon is dominated by one great monument: the vast Gothic Palais des Papes with its cathedral, the broken bridge and almost 4km of ramparts. The Petit Palais adds Italian primitives.

Strasbourg's heritage is spread across a whole townscape, from the pink cathedral and its astronomical clock to the half-timbered houses of Petite France and the German imperial avenues of the Neustadt. Its museums are broader too, with three collections in the Palais Rohan alone. Each city takes about two unhurried days.

Strasbourg is the livelier of the two for most of the year, thanks to its large university. The Krutenau quarter and Place Saint-Étienne have student bars, beer cellars and riverside terraces, although clubs are few and nights rarely go late.

Avignon is quieter still: an aperitif on Place Pie, then near-silent lanes by midnight. July is the exception, when festival crowds keep the squares full until the small hours.

Avignon has the more dramatic surroundings. Mont Ventoux's bare summit, the Luberon's ochre trails, the Alpilles crags, canoeing on the Gardon and the flamingos of the Camargue are all within about an hour, although summer heat and the mistral make spring and autumn the seasons for them.

Strasbourg's appeal is gentler and greener. There are flat cycling routes along the Rhine and into Germany, riverside forests with storks and beavers, and the forested Vosges and Black Forest for walking within an hour.

Both are excellent bases, but Avignon has the edge. Within half an hour lie the Roman arenas of Nîmes and Arles, the theatre at Orange and the Pont du Gard, with Les Baux, the Luberon villages and the Châteauneuf vineyards close behind. The villages really need a car.

Strasbourg's trips cross a border: Colmar and the Alsace wine route on one side, and Baden-Baden, Freiburg and Basel on the other. More of them are easy to reach by train.

Strasbourg works much better with children. The flat, car-free centre suits pushchairs, the boat trips and the stork-filled Orangerie with its rowing lake are easy wins, Le Vaisseau is built for young visitors, and Europa-Park is about an hour away.

In Avignon, the tablet tour of the Palais, the dancing bridge and the Rocher des Doms playground fill a day. After that, families need a car for the Pont du Gard or the Camargue, and the cobbles and July crowds can be tiring.

Strasbourg is the easier city to get around. Trams run to the station, the European quarter and across the Rhine to Kehl, separated cycle lanes cover the city, and a car is useful only for the wine villages.

Avignon's walled centre is just as walkable, if more cobbled and windy, and regional trains reach Arles, Nîmes and Marseille easily. Its real draw, though, is the hill villages and Ventoux, and for those a hire car is close to essential.

Strasbourg offers more choice. There is a department store and chains around Place Kléber, independent bookshops and delicatessens near the cathedral, regional pottery and linens, and the Christmas market in December.

Avignon is smaller and more focused: Provençal cottons, lavender and olive-wood in the lanes off Rue des Marchands, and edible souvenirs from Les Halles. Antiques hunters head out to L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.

Overall costs are much the same, cheaper than Paris but not a bargain in either city. What differs is the timing. Avignon's rooms are dearest in July, during the festival, and exploring the countryside usually means paying for a hire car.

Strasbourg is most expensive at the Christmas market and when the European Parliament sits, but its cheap trams and bike hire keep day-to-day spending lower.

Avignon wins on the strength of July. The Festival d'Avignon fills the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des Papes, and the Off fringe stages over a thousand shows a day in cellars and courtyards, turning the whole town into a stage. The rest of the year there is opera and a jazz club.

Strasbourg is steadier through the year, with the Opéra national du Rhin, a full philharmonic season, the Théâtre National and the Musica festival in autumn, but it has nothing with the scale of Avignon's summer.

Strasbourg is the better choice if baths and treatments are what you want. The city has its own municipal bathhouse from the early 1900s, with a steam room and pools that locals visit as part of their ordinary week. Across the Rhine, Baden-Baden's Friedrichsbad and Caracalla thermal baths are under an hour away.

Avignon has nothing like that. Apart from the treatment rooms in a few better hotels, there is no bathing to speak of. What it offers instead, and Strasbourg cannot, is warmth: a slow lunch in a shaded square, a quiet late afternoon on the Rocher des Doms, or a week by a farmhouse pool among the vines and lavender. This kind of rest works best in spring and early autumn, because the July festival fills the town and the mistral can blow for days.