Baden-Baden or Geneva?

Neither city has a coast, but only Geneva offers real summer swimming. The Bains des Pâquis jetty, the Eaux-Vives shore and Genève-Plage give you clean lake water, lawns and pebbles right in the city, and by August the lake is warm enough for a long swim.

Baden-Baden has the gravel-pit lakes out on the Rhine plain and some outdoor pools, which are fine for a hot afternoon but nothing to plan a trip around. Its water is the thermal kind, enjoyed indoors.

Both cities sit in wine country and both cook with a French accent, but Geneva has more choice. Lake perch, fondue in wood-panelled brasseries and a wide range of international cuisines, supported by the diplomatic community, give it variety, and Carouge and the Old Town are the places for a good dinner.

Baden-Baden is small, and its centre relies on hotel dining and cafés serving coffee and cake. Its real pleasures are the Riesling and Pinot Noir taverns of the Rebland villages and hearty Baden dishes such as Flammkuchen and venison, with the Black Forest's celebrated restaurants a drive away. Geneva is far dearer at every level.

Each is worth two days or so, though Geneva has a little more to fill them. Its story is the Reformation and diplomacy: Calvin's St Pierre Cathedral with the excavations beneath it, the Reformation Wall, the Palais des Nations, the Red Cross museum and CERN.

In Baden-Baden the main sight is the town itself, a Belle Époque spa resort of colonnades, hillside villas and the gilded Kurhaus, listed among the Great Spa Towns of Europe. The Museum Frieder Burda and the Kunsthalle give it modern art of good quality for a town its size.

Neither is a party town, but Geneva at least has proper nights out. In the Pâquis, behind the station, bars stay busy late, Carouge has wine terraces, and the alternative centres around Plainpalais and Jonction run club nights, even if weeknights are quiet.

Evenings in Baden-Baden are dressed-up and end early: the casino in the Kurhaus, hotel and wine bars, and calm streets by late evening. For clubs you would go to Karlsruhe or Strasbourg.

Both have hills and forest at the edge of town, but Geneva's mountains are much bigger. The Salève cable car, the Jura ridge for hiking and cross-country skiing, sailing on the lake and Chamonix about an hour away put it in real Alpine country, with Mont Blanc visible on clear days.

Baden-Baden opens straight into the northern Black Forest, which is wooded upland rather than high peaks. The Merkur funicular, the Battert cliffs and the Black Forest High Road up to the moorland of the Hornisgrinde offer fine forest walking and mountain biking, though winter skiing is only modest.

Both are excellent bases, and the difference lies in where the trips go and how you get there. From Baden-Baden they head to Strasbourg and the Alsace wine villages, Heidelberg and Freiburg, and the UNESCO-listed cathedral at Speyer and monastery at Maulbronn. It is a mix of old towns and churches, and a car makes it far easier.

Geneva's trips centre on the lake and the Alps: steamers to Lausanne, Montreux and Chillon past the Lavaux terraces, Annecy and Yvoire on the French side, and Gruyères or Bern for a longer day. Most of it can be reached by boat or train.

Both are safe and calm and neither is built around children, but Geneva copes a little better inside the city. The animal dioramas at the Natural History Museum, the small animal enclosures, the lakeside playgrounds and the yellow harbour boats can fill a couple of days, and the trams take pushchairs easily.

Baden-Baden is a town for adults taking the waters, and the Friedrichsbad does not admit young children. Its strong card lies an hour south: Europa-Park, a major theme park of the kind Geneva does not have, with Karlsruhe's zoo closer still.

Geneva is much the easier place to get around. Trams, buses and the harbour boats run as one punctual network, the airport is a few minutes by train, and regional rail reaches France and the rest of Switzerland, so you will rarely need a car.

Baden-Baden's centre is compact and walkable, despite some steep streets. But the station is a bus ride away in Oos, and the wine villages, the High Road and Alsace really call for a car.

Geneva is a real shopping destination, while Baden-Baden is a pleasant place to browse. The Rue du Rhône is lined with the flagships of the big Swiss watch houses and luxury labels, and the Old Town chocolatiers, the craft workshops of Carouge and the Plainpalais flea market add variety.

On Sophienstraße and Lange Straße, Baden-Baden has jewellers, watchmakers and delicatessens for a wealthy spa crowd. Beyond that there are no department stores or markets, and keen shoppers head over to Strasbourg.

In Baden-Baden the expense gathers around the things the town is famous for. The grand hotels set a high bar for a room, and since the baths charge for every session, a stay built on daily visits to the Friedrichsbad and Caracalla mounts up quickly. Step outside that spa routine and the rest of a stay, from local buses to an evening out, costs much what it would elsewhere in the region.

Geneva is dear before you have done anything at all, because the high cost sits in the basics of a bed and a meal rather than in any one attraction, and it lasts all year. The cheap side of the city is the outdoors and the public institutions: swimming off the lake shore and many of the museums cost little or nothing. Plenty of visitors keep the bill down by basing themselves on the French side of the border and coming in by train.

Baden-Baden's musical life turns on one large festival hall, while Geneva has a fuller resident season of opera, ballet and theatre. The Festspielhaus, built into the old railway station, is one of Germany's biggest opera and concert houses and brings leading international orchestras and soloists through its seasons, and the town's own philharmonic plays in the Kurhaus. Brahms and Clara Schumann both worked here, but jazz, rock and theatre are thin.

In Geneva the Grand Théâtre stages opera and ballet, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande plays in Victoria Hall, and the Comédie and smaller playhouses put on French-language theatre. Concerts and dance at the Bâtiment des Forces Motrices in the middle of the Rhône, small jazz and rock venues and open-air concerts in summer give it a less formal side as well.

Wellness is the reason Baden-Baden exists, and Geneva cannot match it. The hot springs the Romans used still feed the Friedrichsbad, with its silent sequence of hot rooms, scrubs and pools, as well as the modern Caracalla complex, and the whole town moves at the pace of the baths.

Geneva has no springs of its own. Its bathing culture centres on the winter sauna and hammam at the Bains des Pâquis, followed by a plunge into the cold lake, along with hotel spas and day trips to Évian. It is restful, but it is not a spa destination.