Baden-Baden or Stuttgart?

Neither has a beach, and nobody should choose either one for swimming. In summer, Baden-Baden offers flooded gravel pits on the Rhine plain and outdoor pools. Stuttgart has outdoor pools, some of them fed by its own mineral springs, and Lake Constance is more than two hours' drive away.

Baden-Baden eats well for a small town. You get Baden dishes, French touches from across the Rhine and excellent Riesling and Pinot Noir from the Rebland villages. But the centre is mostly hotel dining and cake cafés, and the celebrated restaurants are a drive away in the northern Black Forest.

Stuttgart has more on the table. Käsespätzle and Zwiebelrostbraten fill its wine taverns, and the Art Nouveau Markthalle is a pleasure to browse. Vineyards inside the city supply Trollinger and the seasonal Besen taverns, and there is a strong fine-dining tier on top.

Baden-Baden is one well-preserved period piece: the Kurhaus, the Trinkhalle, the Lichtentaler Allee and the hillside villas, with Roman bath ruins underneath and the Frieder Burda museum and Kunsthalle for art. It is charming and hangs together well, but a day or two covers it.

Stuttgart has more weight and more variety. There are the Mercedes-Benz and Porsche museums, the European painting in the Staatsgalerie, Le Corbusier's houses at the Weissenhof Estate and the palaces on Schlossplatz. The old core was bombed, so the extra days here go on modern design and industry rather than old-town atmosphere.

Baden-Baden's night out is the gilded casino in the Kurhaus, with a dress code and perhaps a hotel bar afterwards. The crowd is older and the streets go quiet by late evening. Stuttgart is no party city, but it has a weekend bar strip along Theodor-Heuss-Strasse, basement clubs with a following for electronic music, and wine bars in the Bohnenviertel. In autumn the beer tents of the Cannstatter Volksfest are added to that.

Baden-Baden has the forest on its doorstep. The Merkur funicular, the Battert cliffs for climbers and trails into the fir woods all start from town. The Black Forest High Road, the Mummelsee and the Hornisgrinde moorland are a short drive further, with modest skiing in winter.

Stuttgart's green spaces feel more like parkland: vineyard paths above the Neckar, the Rotwildpark and Schönbuch forests, and easy cycling along the river. The cliffs and caves of the Swabian Jura are a real draw, but they are about an hour away, and so is the Black Forest.

Both are excellent bases, and the difference is direction. Baden-Baden looks across the Rhine to Strasbourg's cathedral, the Alsace wine villages and Colmar, and south to Freiburg, though a car helps a lot for Alsace and the Black Forest. Stuttgart looks the other way, to Ludwigsburg's palace and Esslingen on the S-Bahn, to Tübingen, Hohenzollern Castle and Ulm's spire, and nearly all of it is easy by train.

Heidelberg and Maulbronn are within reach of both towns, and Baden-Baden itself makes a good day out from Stuttgart.

Baden-Baden is safe and calm, and children enjoy the funicular, the forest trails and the Lichtentaler Allee. But it is a town for adults taking the waters, so families tend to spend their days elsewhere, at the big theme park an hour south or the zoo in Karlsruhe.

Stuttgart works well for a whole family stay. It has Wilhelma's zoo and gardens among Moorish-style pavilions, the Killesberg park with its narrow-gauge railway, car museums for older children and the fairy-tale garden at Ludwigsburg nearby.

Baden-Baden's centre is a short, sometimes steep walk from end to end. But the station is a few kilometres out in Oos, and the wine villages, the High Road and Alsace really call for a car.

Stuttgart's flat core is just as walkable. Where the hills begin, the Stadtbahn, S-Bahn, rack railway and funicular take over on one ticket and reach Wilhelma, the car museums and the airport. Here a car is only needed for the countryside.

Baden-Baden's shopping is small and polished. Jewellers, watchmakers and boutiques along Sophienstraße and Lange Straße cater to a well-off spa crowd, and the souvenirs are cuckoo clocks and local wine.

Stuttgart has the scale that Baden-Baden lacks. There is the long pedestrian Königstrasse, a grand nineteenth-century family department store for designer fashion, independent shops around Calwer Strasse and the Bohnenviertel, and the outlet town of Metzingen half an hour away.

Neither is cheap, but Baden-Baden costs more. It was built for the wealthy, grand hotels set the tone and you pay for every visit to the baths, so a stay built around the spas adds up quickly. Guesthouses and wine taverns are the way to keep costs down.

Stuttgart's hotel prices follow business travel, so weekends and the quieter months are the better deal. Its taverns and beer gardens serve generous portions at fair prices.

For a town its size, Baden-Baden does remarkably well on stage. The Festspielhaus, one of Germany's largest opera and concert houses, brings in international orchestras and soloists, the town's philharmonic plays in the Kurhaus, and Brahms's summers here are part of local pride. Outside classical music there is little.

Stuttgart's stage life is wider and deeper. Its ballet, shaped by John Cranko, is among the most admired in Europe, and the Staatsoper is known for bold productions. The Liederhalle, the long-running musicals at Möhringen and a working jazz scene fill the rest of the week.

Bathing is the reason Baden-Baden exists. A stay revolves around the domed Friedrichsbad, with its silent, unclothed sequence of hot rooms and scrubs, and the pools and saunas of Caracalla next door. Grand hotels with their own spas and slow park walks keep the rest of the day unhurried.

Stuttgart's mineral springs are a real surprise, with naturally carbonated warm water at Bad Cannstatt and the Leuze baths. Still, they make a good afternoon in a businesslike city rather than a reason to travel.