Baden-Baden or Venice?

Baden-Baden has no beach at all. A summer swim there means a flooded gravel pit on the Rhine plain or an outdoor pool.

Venice at least has the Lido, a short vaporetto ride from San Marco, with kilometres of shallow, sandy Adriatic shore, and quieter Pellestrina beyond it. Neither city is a beach destination, but only Venice can give you an afternoon by the sea.

Venice eats better, as long as you steer clear of the picture menus around San Marco. Order cicchetti and a spritz at the counter in the bacari of the Rialto and Cannaregio, and try lagoon cooking from the Rialto market, such as cuttlefish risotto blackened with its ink.

Baden-Baden's case rests on its region more than the town itself. Flammkuchen, venison and Black Forest gateau are good, but the centre is mostly hotel dining and cafés. Its real strength is the Riesling and Pinot Noir poured in the Rebland wine taverns just outside town.

The gap here is very wide. Venice is a whole city of palaces and churches standing on water, with the Accademia, the Frari, the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, the Guggenheim and the Biennale, and a week is not enough for it.

Baden-Baden is a well-preserved Belle Époque resort: the Kurhaus and Trinkhalle, Roman bath ruins under the old town, and fine modern art at the Museum Frieder Burda. That makes a pleasant day or two of sightseeing, which is a different order of trip altogether.

Neither city keeps late hours, but Venice has more going on in the early evening: aperitivo crowds along the Fondamenta della Misericordia, and students in Campo Santa Margherita after dark. In Baden-Baden the evening centres on the Kurhaus casino and its dress code, plus hotel and wine bars for an older crowd. If you want clubs, Baden-Baden sends you to Karlsruhe or Strasbourg, and Venice to the mainland or Jesolo.

Baden-Baden has the forest on its doorstep. The Merkur funicular, the Battert cliffs and the Panoramaweg all start from town, and the Black Forest High Road leads on to the Mummelsee and the Hornisgrinde moorland, with mountain biking in summer and modest skiing in winter.

Venice's outdoors is flat and watery: kayaking or Venetian rowing among the salt marshes of the northern lagoon, egrets and flamingos, and cycling along the sea walls of Pellestrina. Hills are an hour away and the Dolomites more than two.

Both make excellent bases, and Venice is the easier one to use. Fast trains from Santa Lucia put Padua, Vicenza and Verona within easy reach, and Murano, Burano and Torcello are just a boat ride away.

Baden-Baden's list is just as tempting: Strasbourg, Heidelberg and Freiburg each about an hour away, plus the UNESCO sites at Speyer and Maulbronn. The Alsace wine route and the Black Forest villages, though, are far easier by car.

Neither city is built around children, and each falls short in its own way. Baden-Baden is calm, safe and easy to walk but geared to adults, and young children are not allowed into the Friedrichsbad, so families end up spending their days at Europa-Park, an hour south. Venice delights children with its boats and car-free alleys, and the Lido's shallow water is good for paddling, but the stepped bridges, summer crowds and lack of parks wear families out.

Venice works slightly better on foot. There are no cars, almost everything is within about a forty-minute walk, and vaporetti run out to the islands, though the stepped bridges are hard work with luggage or a pushchair. Baden-Baden's compact centre is pleasant to walk despite some steep streets, but the station is a bus ride out of town and the best excursions really need a car.

Venice gives shoppers much more to find: Murano glass, Burano lace, papier-mâché masks, marbled paper and furlane slippers from real workshops in Dorsoduro and Castello, and the big fashion names on Calle Larga XXII Marzo. The trick is avoiding the imported copies on the main routes.

Baden-Baden's Sophienstraße and Lange Straße are polished but short, mostly jewellers, watchmakers and delicatessens, with cuckoo clocks and local wine as the souvenirs.

Baden-Baden is the slightly easier of the two on the budget, though neither comes cheap. Its grand hotels and the charge for every visit to the baths set a high tone, but simple guesthouses and bakeries are fairly priced by German standards, and the buses cost little.

Venice is harder going. Rooms in the historic centre, vaporetti priced for visitors and entry to most churches and sights all add up, especially in summer and at carnival. The savings come from eating cicchetti at the counter, staying in a quieter sestiere or in Mestre, and coming in late autumn or winter.

Both are strong on classical music, in different ways. Baden-Baden's Festspielhaus, one of Germany's largest opera and concert houses, brings in international orchestras and soloists, and the town's links with Brahms and Clara Schumann run deep.

Venice has La Fenice, the opera house where Verdi and Rossini premiered works, along with the Biennale's contemporary festivals and Vivaldi concerts in churches most evenings, which vary in quality. In both places, jazz and rock are thin.

This is what Baden-Baden exists for. The silent sequence of hot rooms and pools in the domed Friedrichsbad and the large saunas at Caracalla both draw on Roman springs, and the whole town slows down around them.

Venice can offer hotel spas in palazzi and on the Lido and Giudecca, with real thermal bathing an hour away at Abano Terme. Its calm comes from having no traffic, and you feel it most in Castello or on Giudecca early and late in the day.