Baden-Baden or Zermatt?

Neither place is worth visiting for outdoor swimming. Baden-Baden at least has warm summers, so the gravel lakes of the Rhine plain and the outdoor pools are pleasant on a hot afternoon, and the rest of its bathing happens indoors in thermal water. In Zermatt the glacial tarns are for photographing the Matterhorn, not for swimming, and a swim means a hotel pool.

Both eat well for small places, but in different settings. Baden-Baden draws on the wider Baden region, with Flammkuchen, venison and Black Forest gateau, a French touch from across the Rhine, and Riesling and Pinot Noir from the Rebland villages, drunk in their own wine taverns.

Zermatt's best meals are up the mountain: long terrace lunches in the chalets around Findeln and Furi, with raclette, air-dried beef and Valais wines such as Petite Arvine. The choice is narrower, cheap meals are harder to find, and many kitchens close between seasons.

Baden-Baden is the stronger sightseeing destination by a long way. The nineteenth-century spa town is itself the attraction, from the gilded Kurhaus and the colonnaded Trinkhalle to the hillside villas. There are Roman bath ruins below the old town, and the Museum Frieder Burda and the Kunsthalle for art.

Zermatt's heritage is narrow and tied to the mountain: the Matterhorn Museum on the first ascent of 1865, the mountaineers' cemetery and the old larch-wood barns of the Hinterdorf. That makes a good morning, and after that the day belongs to the peaks.

Zermatt has the livelier evenings, at least in winter. The après-ski bars on the runs into the village fill from late afternoon, and a few small clubs on the main street stay open past midnight. In summer it goes quiet early, as hikers turn in before dawn starts.

A night out in Baden-Baden means dressing up: the casino in the Kurhaus, then a hotel or wine bar, with the streets calm by late evening. For dancing, people go to Karlsruhe or Strasbourg.

Both have landscape on the doorstep, but Zermatt's is on another scale. The Matterhorn, the Gorner Glacier and a ring of four-thousand-metre peaks are reached by lifts climbing above 3,800m. There is skiing across into Italy and some glacier pistes stay open in summer, and trails such as the Five Lakes walk pass marmots and ibex.

Baden-Baden has gentler country: the Merkur funicular, the Battert cliffs, the Panoramaweg through the vineyards and the Black Forest High Road up to the Hornisgrinde. It is lovely for walking and mountain biking, at its best in autumn colour, but these are wooded hills rather than high mountains.

Baden-Baden is far better placed for days out. Strasbourg is about an hour away, and the Alsace wine route, Colmar, Heidelberg, Freiburg and the UNESCO sites at Speyer and Maulbronn are all realistic day trips, especially with a car.

From Zermatt every outing starts with the train down the valley. That makes Sion's castle hills or Brig's Stockalper Palace a fair effort, and Bern only just fits into a day. Most visitors spend their spare days on another mountain instead.

Both are calm and safe with children, though families use them differently. Baden-Baden works mainly as a quiet base. Young children are not admitted to the Friedrichsbad, so days go to the Merkur funicular, the forest paths and above all Europa-Park, about an hour south.

In Zermatt families spend their days in the valley itself, with car-free streets, ski schools and nursery slopes at Sunnegga, and marmots and cog railways in summer. Rainy days are hard to fill, though, and the thin air at the highest viewpoints can be too much for small children.

Zermatt is the simpler place once you have arrived. The car-free village is a compact strip you can walk end to end. Electric taxis and a chain of railways and gondolas from the centre carry you into the mountains, though leaving the valley takes over an hour by train.

Baden-Baden's centre is also walkable, if hilly. But the station is a bus ride out in Oos, and the Black Forest High Road, the wine villages and Alsace are much easier with a car.

Neither is a shopping destination, but Baden-Baden is the better place to browse. Sophienstraße and Lange Straße have jewellers, fashion boutiques and delicatessens suited to an unhurried stroll, and Strasbourg is close for anything more.

Zermatt has a single main street of watch boutiques and souvenir shops. Its real strength is ski and mountaineering gear, worth knowing if you need equipment.

Both are expensive, but Zermatt costs a good deal more. In Baden-Baden the grand hotels and spa fees add up, yet simple guesthouses, bakeries and wine taverns are reasonably priced for Germany, and buses are cheap.

In Zermatt even plain rooms, terrace lunches and the lift tickets every visitor needs cost far more than in most of Europe. Self-catering and sleeping down the valley in Täsch help, but you still need a generous budget.

Baden-Baden has a real musical life for its size. The Festspielhaus, built into the old railway station, brings international orchestras and opera. The town's philharmonic plays in the Kurhaus, and the small nineteenth-century theatre adds drama, in a town where Brahms and Clara Schumann worked.

Zermatt has no theatre or concert hall. Outside Zermatt Unplugged in spring and the chamber music festival in late summer, live music rarely goes beyond a band in an après-ski bar.

Wellness is what defines Baden-Baden. Hot springs rise beneath the old town, and a stay centres on the silent, domed Friedrichsbad and the pools and saunas of Caracalla, with the rest of the day kept slow.

Zermatt relaxes you in a different way, with excellent hotel spas, some open to day visitors, clean air and no traffic noise. There is no thermal bathing, though, and in the busiest weeks the mood is more active than restful.