Baden-Baden or Salzburg?

Neither town is a beach destination, but Salzburg at least has proper summer swimming within reach. Fuschlsee, Wolfgangsee and Mondsee lie less than an hour east. Their water is clear and green, you get in from lawns and wooden jetties, and it is warm enough from June to early September.

In Baden-Baden you are limited to the old gravel pits of the Rhine plain and outdoor pools, which are fine for cooling off on a hot day. The water people come here for is the thermal kind, and you enjoy it indoors.

The two are evenly matched, and the difference is mostly in what you drink. Baden-Baden's strength is wine. Riesling and Pinot Noir come from the Rebland villages just outside town, and you drink them in the village taverns with Flammkuchen, venison and Black Forest ham, with a French touch from across the Rhine.

Salzburg runs on coffee and beer: old coffee houses for cake, and the monastery brewery in Mülln, which pours from wooden barrels in a chestnut-shaded garden. Its old-town restaurants lean towards tour groups, so in both places the better meals are away from the centre, in the northern Black Forest or in the inns on Salzburg's hills.

Salzburg has considerably more to see. Its UNESCO-listed Baroque centre, the cathedral and Residenz, the Hohensalzburg fortress above them and the Mozart houses fill two or three full days. St Peter's catacombs and Schloss Hellbrunn add more.

In Baden-Baden the sight is the spa town as a whole. The Kurhaus, the Trinkhalle and the Lichtentaler Allee recall the nineteenth-century summers of Europe's aristocracy. The Museum Frieder Burda and the Kunsthalle add good modern art, but the town fills a day or two of sightseeing rather than a longer stay.

An evening in Baden-Baden is a smart, early affair. You dress for the gilded casino rooms in the Kurhaus, then have a glass in a hotel or wine bar among an older crowd, and the old town is calm well before midnight.

Salzburg is a little livelier after dinner. Its beer halls fill with locals and visitors at long wooden tables, and student pubs along Rudolfskai and near the university keep going later at weekends during term. Neither has much club life: from Baden-Baden people go to Karlsruhe or Strasbourg, and from Salzburg to Munich.

The difference is scale: Baden-Baden has the wooded upland of the northern Black Forest, while Salzburg sits where the Alps begin. Baden-Baden's outdoors starts with the Merkur funicular, whose views stretch to the Vosges, the Battert cliffs for climbers and the Panoramaweg through forest and vines. The High Road leads on to the dark Mummelsee and the Hornisgrinde moorland at about 1,100m. It is lovely in autumn colour, but the skiing is modest.

Salzburg's country is steeper and more varied. People go paragliding and trail running on the Gaisberg, cycle the Salzach meadows, sail and paddle on the Salzkammergut lakes, and take a boat on the fjord-like Königssee. The bigger ski areas of the Salzburger Land are about an hour's drive away.

Both are excellent bases, and the difference is in the kind of outing. From Baden-Baden the draw is cities and wine: Strasbourg and the Alsace villages, Heidelberg and Freiburg, and the UNESCO-listed cathedral at Speyer and monastery at Maulbronn.

From Salzburg the trips are mostly about lakes and salt. You can visit Hallstatt and St Wolfgang, go down the mines at Hallein and Berchtesgaden, or see the clifftop fortress at Werfen. Munich is an hour and a half away by train for a big-city day.

Salzburg is the better town for children in its own right. Hellbrunn's trick fountains and the zoo beside them, the hands-on Haus der Natur, the marionette theatre and the miners' slides in the nearby salt mines give plenty to do. The cobbles do make pushchairs hard work.

Baden-Baden is calm and safe but made for adults, and the Friedrichsbad does not let young children in. Its trump card is Europa-Park, about an hour south. Salzburg has no theme park to match it.

Baden-Baden is a little harder to get around. The baths, the Kurhaus and the museums are close together, but some streets climb steeply, and the railway station is a bus ride away in Oos. Trains run easily to Karlsruhe and Freiburg. For the High Road and the Rebland villages a car makes life much simpler.

Salzburg's pedestrianised centre is easier going. The old town, the fortress and Mirabell are all within about fifteen minutes on foot, and a dense trolleybus network reaches Hellbrunn and the Untersberg cable car. The flat river paths suit a bike. You only need a car for the lake villages, because the regional buses are slow.

Salzburg has more of its own character for shoppers. You have the guild signs of Getreidegasse, workshops making dirndls and loden jackets to measure, the farmers' market by the Andräkirche and the Advent market on Domplatz. Baden-Baden has no local craft or market of that kind.

Shopping in Baden-Baden is smaller in scale but more upmarket. Jewellers, watchmakers and boutiques on Sophienstraße and Lange Straße serve a well-off spa crowd, and cuckoo clocks and Rebland wine are the things to take home.

Both are expensive, but the costs come from different places. In Baden-Baden it is the grand hotels and the charge for every visit to the baths, so a stay built around the spas adds up quickly. Guesthouses and wine taverns are reasonably priced.

In Salzburg, rooms in and near the old town are expensive all year and hard to find during the festival and the Advent markets. Staying across the river, eating at inns in the outer districts and buying a city card all help.

Baden-Baden is a remarkable music town for its size. Its Festspielhaus, built into the old station, is one of Germany's largest opera and concert houses and draws international orchestras and soloists. The town's philharmonic plays in the Kurhaus, and the small nineteenth-century theatre keeps up the tradition of Brahms and Clara Schumann.

Salzburg is on another level. The summer festival puts on opera, concerts and theatre on several stages, including the old riding school cut into the Mönchsberg rock, with Jedermann performed in front of the cathedral. Mozart Week and the Easter Festival add two more seasons, and between them the Mozarteum, the Landestheater and the marionettes keep a full programme going. Book festival tickets well ahead. Neither town offers much jazz or rock.

This is where Baden-Baden pulls far ahead. Hot springs rise under the old town, and a stay revolves around the Friedrichsbad's silent sequence of hot rooms and scrubs and Caracalla's pools and saunas. Grand hotel spas and walks along the Lichtentaler Allee set the slow pace.

Salzburg has no springs of its own. In the city you have the Paracelsus Bad and quiet walks on the Mönchsberg, but for real spa bathing visitors go out to Bad Reichenhall or the Gastein valley.