Bamberg or Lucerne?

Neither city has a coast, but Lucerne has a real swimming culture on its clean, mountain-backed lake. People swim from the Lido, the old wooden lake baths and the lawns at Ufschötti, and boats reach small bathing spots in the lakeside villages.

Bamberg offers a river bathing spot in the Hain park, gravel-pit lakes and public pools. That is fine for cooling off, but there is no scenery to linger over. In both places swimming is a summer extra rather than a reason to go.

Bamberg gives you more to eat and drink for its own sake. Dense ranks of small breweries, smoky Rauchbier from wooden barrels and hillside Bierkeller under chestnut trees make drinking a real reason to visit, and Schäufele and dumplings suit it well.

Lucerne's cooking is competent Swiss comfort food: Chügelipastete, fondue and lake perch, served in guild houses and on terraces along the Reuss. Prices are higher, and many places near the Chapel Bridge cater to coach parties. Neither city has much range beyond its regional cooking.

Bamberg has the richer historic townscape. A whole UNESCO-listed old town survived the war, with the four-towered cathedral and the Bamberg Horseman, the island Old Town Hall and the fishermen's houses of Little Venice, and it rewards a couple of days on foot.

Lucerne has fewer sights, but they are famous: the Chapel Bridge and Water Tower, the climbable towers of the Musegg Wall and the Lion Monument. It also has the stronger collections, with Picasso and Klee at the Rosengart. Bamberg's museums are small, so it is the streets you come for.

Both are quiet towns after dark, and the difference lies in the setting. In Bamberg the evening is spent in brewery taverns, in the student bars of the Sand quarter or up in the summer beer cellars. Lucerne's evenings are more about a wine bar on the river or a cocktail in the Neustadt, and the lakefront is empty by midnight. Lucerne's one great exception is Fasnacht, when the town stays out in costume until dawn. Bamberg's answer to a big night is the train to Nuremberg.

This is Lucerne's biggest advantage. Pilatus rises above the city by the steepest cogwheel railway in the world, Rigi has wide ridge walks, and Titlis keeps its glacier snow all year. Boats, trains and trails link up into a single day out, and winter adds skiing.

Bamberg's countryside is gentle by comparison. The crags and caves of Franconian Switzerland, the Steigerwald beech woods and the cycle paths along the Main make for easy walking and cycling, often from one village brewery to the next, but there are no mountains.

Both are excellent bases, and Lucerne has a slight edge in variety. Zurich, Bern and Basel are each under an hour away, and the lake itself is an outing, with steamers to the Rütli meadow and the William Tell country around Altdorf.

From Bamberg, the trips are to the old towns of Franconia: Nuremberg's castle, Würzburg's Residence, Coburg and Bayreuth, plus the baroque basilica of Vierzehnheiligen nearby. It is a coherent historic circuit, though it offers less variety of landscape than Lucerne's lake and mountain day trips.

Lucerne has more to keep children busy. The Swiss Museum of Transport can fill a day, the Glacier Garden has its mirror maze, and the steamers, cogwheel trains and summer toboggan run on Pilatus turn the journeys themselves into the fun. These outings do get expensive and depend on clear weather.

Bamberg is calm and safe, with playgrounds and rowing boats in the Hain park, beer gardens where children play among the tables and a leisure pool for wet days. Beyond that it is churches and steep cobbles that are hard going with a pushchair.

Arriving by train shows the difference straight away. Bamberg's station is a fair walk from the old town, while in Lucerne the station, the boat piers and the start of the Old Town stand side by side on the lakefront. Once you are in Bamberg's centre, the island town, the cathedral hill and Little Venice are minutes apart on foot, though the climbs to the cathedral and Michaelsberg are short, steep and cobbled. Buses and bicycles cover the flat lower town and the outer districts.

Lucerne goes further because its excursions use the same ticket system as its buses. Steamers leave from in front of the station, and integrated Swiss tickets carry you on by cogwheel railway and cable car into the mountains. You will need to read the connections, but the whole stay works without a car.

Lucerne has the stronger shopping, though only within one specialism: Swiss watches and jewellery along Schwanenplatz, plus chocolate, army knives and cuckoo clocks. Beyond that its fashion and design shops are thin.

Bamberg has chain stores on Lange Strasse, antique dealers near the cathedral and some independent bookshops. Its best things to take home are bottled Rauchbier and produce from the town's market gardens. It is shopping to fill an hour, not a reason to visit.

There is a wide gap here. Bamberg keeps to modest Franconian pricing, with cheap local beer, hearty tavern plates that cost less than in a big German city, and rooms that only get tight and dearer at weekends and in the Christmas market season.

Lucerne is very expensive. Central hotels, ordinary restaurant meals and the mountain railways that are the point of a visit all add up quickly. Swiss travel passes and lakeside supermarket picnics soften the cost, but they do not change it.

Bamberg has a world-class orchestra but no opera, while Lucerne has a world-class festival. The Bamberg Symphony plays its home season in the concert hall on the Regnitz, and around it are drama at the ETA Hoffmann Theatre and organ and choral concerts in the cathedral. Opera means the trip to the Bayreuth Festival, an hour away.

Lucerne offers more, and a wider range. The Lucerne Festival brings the leading orchestras and soloists to Jean Nouvel's lakefront hall, which is famous for its acoustics, and the city theatre stages opera and dance as well as drama. Outside the festival weeks the programme is good rather than deep, with some jazz and a blues festival.

Neither city has a bathing tradition of its own, so in both the calm itself is the treat. Bamberg's version is long afternoons in shaded beer gardens and evenings once the day visitors leave, with the warm brine pools of Bad Staffelstein half an hour away by train. Lucerne offers lakeside promenades, slow steamer trips and the Botta-designed mineral bath high on the Rigi with a mountain view. Its Old Town is crowded at midday, though.