Baden-Baden or Berlin?

Neither city is anywhere near the sea, but Berlin at least gives you a proper summer swim. Strandbad Wannsee has a long sandy shore and wicker beach chairs, and the Müggelsee and forest lakes such as Schlachtensee are a short S-Bahn ride away, warm enough in July and August.

Baden-Baden's outdoor swimming is limited to gravel-pit lakes on the Rhine plain and the town's pools. Here the water you come for is the warm water inside the bathhouses.

Berlin is the better city for eating out because of its range. Turkish bakeries in Kreuzberg and Neukölln, good Vietnamese, Levantine and Korean cooking, Markthalle Neun's street-food evenings and a serious fine-dining tier mean you can eat well and casually every night of a long stay.

Baden-Baden has less choice but a stronger sense of place. Flammkuchen, venison, Black Forest ham and cherry gateau carry a French accent from across the Rhine, and the Riesling and Pinot Noir taverns of the Rebland villages are its best evenings out. In the centre you mostly find hotel dining and cafés, and keen eaters drive out to the celebrated restaurants of the northern Black Forest.

Berlin has far more to see. Museum Island alone, with Nefertiti and the Pergamon collections, could fill several days, and then come the Gemäldegalerie, Charlottenburg Palace and the sites of the city's twentieth-century history, from the Reichstag dome to the Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse.

Baden-Baden's appeal is the town itself, an intact Belle Époque spa resort with the Kurhaus, the Trinkhalle and hillside villas. The Museum Frieder Burda, the Kunsthalle and the Brahms house add real quality, but it is a day or two of sightseeing against Berlin's week or more.

This is where the two differ most. Berlin's techno clubs in old power stations and factories have no fixed closing time, and on top of that there are smoky Kneipen in Neukölln, cocktail bars in Mitte and canal-side drinking in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg.

A night out in Baden-Baden means a jacket for the gilded casino rooms, then a glass in a hotel or wine bar among an older crowd. Anyone wanting to dance has to go to Karlsruhe or Strasbourg.

Baden-Baden has the better outdoors, because it sits on real upland. The Merkur funicular and the Battert cliffs lead straight into the fir forest. Further in, the Black Forest High Road passes the Mummelsee and rises above 1,100m on the Hornisgrinde, with waterfalls, mountain biking and some winter skiing.

Berlin's green space is generous but flat: the Tiergarten, the runways of Tempelhof, the Grunewald and Havel lakes, and the Wall Trail by bike. Brandenburg's lakes are good for canoeing, but there is nothing to climb.

Baden-Baden's position near the French border gives it the richer choice. Strasbourg and the Alsace wine route, Heidelberg, Freiburg, the UNESCO cathedral at Speyer and Maulbronn monastery are all around an hour away, which means two countries and several very different regions, though a car helps.

Berlin has one outstanding outing in Potsdam's Sanssouci palaces, only half an hour out, plus Wittenberg, Leipzig, the Spreewald and Sachsenhausen by train. Dresden makes a long day, and after that the options thin out.

Berlin is the easier city with children. Two large zoos, the dinosaur skeleton at the Natural History Museum, the Museum of Technology's trains and planes, playgrounds everywhere and flat streets for prams keep a family busy without a car.

Baden-Baden is safe and calm, and the funicular and forest trails go down well, but the Friedrichsbad turns away young children and the mood is adult. Families usually spend their days at Europa-Park, about an hour south.

Berlin's U-Bahn, S-Bahn, trams and buses run on one ticket, the trains run all night at weekends, and the flat streets suit cycling. The catch is size: Mitte, Kreuzberg and Charlottenburg are separate centres you ride between.

Baden-Baden is the opposite. The baths, Kurhaus and museums are a short, sometimes steep walk apart, but the station is a bus ride out and the wine villages, the High Road and Alsace really need a car.

Berlin gives a shopper much more to do. You get the brands on the Kurfürstendamm, the KaDeWe food hall, young designers around Hackescher Markt and vintage and record shops in Kreuzberg, with the Sunday flea markets at Mauerpark and Boxhagener Platz as the highlight.

Baden-Baden is smaller but more polished. Sophienstraße and Lange Straße are lined with jewellers, watchmakers and delicatessens for a wealthy spa crowd, and that is about the extent of it.

Berlin is the cheaper stay. Hotels cost less than in most big capitals, and döner stands, Vietnamese canteens and corner bars make cheap meals easy. The costs that add up there are museum tickets and fine dining.

Baden-Baden was built for the wealthy and still prices itself that way. Grand hotels set the tone and every visit to the baths is paid for separately. Guesthouses, bakeries and wine taverns are fair value, but a stay built around the spas soon gets expensive.

Both are serious about classical music, but Berlin works on a different scale: three opera houses, the Berlin Philharmonic in Scharoun's Philharmonie, the Konzerthaus, Brecht's Berliner Ensemble, the Friedrichstadt-Palast revue and a deep jazz and rock circuit, so there is something on every night.

Baden-Baden is remarkable for a small town. The Festspielhaus brings leading international orchestras and opera productions, and the Kurhaus and the little nineteenth-century theatre continue a tradition left by Brahms and Clara Schumann. Beyond classical music, though, there is little.

Baden-Baden is one of Europe's classic places to take the waters. The springs the Romans used still fill the Friedrichsbad, with its silent, unclothed sequence of hot rooms and pools under a dome, and the Caracalla's indoor and outdoor pools next door.

Berlin has no springs of its own. It offers German sauna culture instead, with large clothes-free complexes and the columned halls of Stadtbad Neukölln, while lazy Sundays in café gardens supply the rest.