Baden-Baden or Lucerne?

Neither is a beach destination, but Lucerne at least has a summer swim worth planning for. The lake warms to around 20-22°C in July and August, and the Lido, the old wooden lake baths and the lawns at Ufschötti are all a short walk from the Old Town.

Baden-Baden has no lake of its own. A swim there means an outdoor pool or one of the flooded gravel pits out on the Rhine plain. Its water comes from hot springs and is enjoyed indoors.

Baden-Baden eats better, mostly because of the region around it. Baden cooking brings Flammkuchen, venison and Black Forest ham with French touches from across the Rhine. The Riesling and Pinot Noir taverns in the Rebland villages make a proper evening out, and some of Germany's most admired restaurants are a short drive into the forest.

Lucerne serves fondue, rösti, lake perch and its veal-filled Chügelipastete in guild-house taverns. The cooking is reliable but the range is narrow, and the tables nearest the Chapel Bridge are geared to tour groups. Both centres are small, so neither offers much variety night after night.

Each is a day or two of sightseeing, but Lucerne's few sights carry more weight. The Chapel Bridge and Water Tower, the climbable towers of the Musegg Wall, the Lion Monument and the Rosengart's Picasso and Klee are landmarks known well beyond Switzerland, set in a medieval Old Town.

Baden-Baden's appeal is the whole town as a period piece: a Belle Époque spa resort of Kurhaus, Trinkhalle and hillside villas, with Roman bath ruins beneath it. The Museum Frieder Burda and the Kunsthalle make a good pair of galleries, and the Russian church and the Old Castle reward the climb.

Neither suits a big night out, though Lucerne has a little more going on. It has cocktail bars and a small club scene in the Neustadt and near the station, students out at weekends, and the all-night Fasnacht carnival before Lent. Baden-Baden's evenings centre on the gilded Kurhaus casino with its dress code, plus hotel and wine bars, and anyone looking for clubs goes to Karlsruhe or Strasbourg.

Lucerne wins clearly on scenery. Alpine peaks rise straight from the lake: Pilatus by cogwheel railway, the ridge walks on Rigi, the open-top cable car up the Stanserhorn and the glacier on Titlis about an hour away, with skiing in winter. The drawback is low cloud, which can hide all of it for days.

Baden-Baden has wooded upland instead. The Merkur funicular, the Battert cliffs and the fir-forest trails begin at the edge of town, and the High Road leads out to the Mummelsee and the moorland of the Hornisgrinde. It is gentler country, better for long forest walks and autumn colour than for high summits.

Both make excellent bases, but the trips are of different kinds. From Baden-Baden they cross borders: Strasbourg and the Alsace wine villages, Heidelberg and Freiburg, and the UNESCO cathedral at Speyer and monastery at Maulbronn, though several of these are easier by car.

Lucerne's trips stay inside Switzerland and go by rail and water. Zurich, Bern and Basel are each under an hour by train, and the lake steamers run to Weggis, Brunnen and the Rütli meadow of the William Tell story. Choose Baden-Baden for French and German towns, and Lucerne for Swiss cities and lake country without driving.

Lucerne is the easier place with children. The Swiss Museum of Transport fills a whole day, and paddle steamers, cogwheel trains and the summer toboggan run on Pilatus make the journeys part of the fun, though rainy days can run short of ideas.

Baden-Baden is calm and safe but made for adults, and the Friedrichsbad does not admit young children. Families tend to use it as a base for Europa-Park, about an hour to the south, and for Karlsruhe's zoo.

Lucerne is the simpler place to manage without a car. The station, the boat piers and the Old Town sit together on the lakefront, and the steamers, trains and cable cars into the mountains all run on integrated tickets.

Baden-Baden's centre is also easy on foot, if hillier, but the station is a bus ride away in Oos. The Black Forest High Road, the Rebland villages and Alsace are all far easier to reach by car.

Neither is a shopping destination, though Lucerne has the edge for one purchase in particular: Swiss watches, sold in large houses on Schwanenplatz alongside army knives and chocolate, plus a Saturday riverside market. Baden-Baden's Sophienstraße and Lange Straße are polished and pleasant to browse for jewellery and delicatessen goods, but there are no markets, and serious shoppers head to Strasbourg.

Neither is cheap, but Baden-Baden costs less. Its grand hotels and spa visits soon add up, yet simple guesthouses, wine taverns and bakeries are fairly priced for Germany.

Lucerne is expensive at every level, from hotel rooms to an ordinary restaurant meal, and the mountain railways that make the trip worthwhile are a big cost of their own. A Swiss travel pass and supermarket picnics by the lake help, but only a little.

Both towns are unusually strong in classical music for their size. Lucerne has the edge thanks to the Lucerne Festival, which brings the world's leading orchestras to Jean Nouvel's lakefront hall with its famous acoustics. The Guggenmusik brass bands of Fasnacht add a louder note.

Baden-Baden answers with the Festspielhaus in its old railway station, one of Germany's largest opera houses, along with a philharmonic in the Kurhaus and the legacy of Brahms and Clara Schumann. Outside classical music, both are thin.

This is where Baden-Baden stands apart. Hot springs once used by the Romans feed the domed Friedrichsbad, a Roman-Irish bath taken in silence, and the modern Caracalla complex next door. The whole town keeps to a slow, early-to-bed rhythm.

Lucerne has no thermal tradition of its own, so a soak means a hotel spa or the Mario Botta mineral bath up on the Rigi, about an hour away. Its calm comes instead from lakeside promenades and afternoons on the steamers, though the Old Town is crowded in the middle of the day.