Bari or Catania?

Catania gives you better swimming without leaving town. To the south, La Playa is a long sandy stretch for an easy beach-club day. To the north, the black basalt of the Riviera dei Ciclopi lets you climb down ladders into very clear water beside the sea stacks of Aci Trezza.

Bari's own Pane e Pomodoro is a sandy local beach that is handy but plain. Most of the time, a beach day there means a train south to the pebble cove at Polignano a Mare or the rocky inlets around Monopoli, which are lovely but are half-day outings rather than a swim on your doorstep.

Both are cities for rooted, inexpensive southern cooking, and Catania has the edge in range and depth. In Bari you eat focaccia barese, sgagliozze and orecchiette rolled in the old town's doorways, raw sea urchins by the fishermen's pier, and Primitivo or Negroamaro wine with simple sit-down meals.

Catania's street food goes further: ragù arancini, crispelle, horse meat grilled on Via Plebiscito, and granita with brioche for breakfast. The Pescheria fish market feeds the trattorias around it. Etna's volcanic vineyards also give it a more interesting wine list than Bari's sturdy reds.

The sights are similar in scale, and either city takes a couple of days, but they come from different periods. Bari is medieval and Romanesque: the dense lanes of Bari Vecchia, the pilgrim Basilica di San Nicola with its relics of St Nicholas, and the Norman-Swabian castle, plus the nineteenth-century Murat grid.

Catania is a baroque city rebuilt after the earthquake of 1693 in dark lava and pale limestone. It has Via dei Crociferi, the vast Benedictine monastery, and Roman remains surfacing below its streets. In early February the Feast of Sant'Agata adds one of Italy's largest processions.

The two are much alike: student crowds, drinks outdoors, and a move to beach clubs in summer. Bari's evenings gather on the steps of Piazza Mercantile and Piazza Ferrarese and then spread into the Umbertino bars.

Catania runs a bit later and louder around Piazza Bellini and Via Gemmellaro, and in summer La Playa's clubs become open-air dance floors. Neither has much serious club culture, and both are quiet on winter weeknights.

This is where the two differ most. Catania lives under Etna, a smoking volcano of about 3,300m that you can reach in under an hour. A cable car and off-road vehicles climb towards the summit craters, and trails cross lava flows and birch woods. Add the Alcantara Gorge, forest walks in the Nebrodi and diving around the sea stacks.

Bari sits on a flat plain of olive groves. Its outdoor options are the seafront promenade, quiet walks and cycling on the Alta Murgia plateau, and the Grotte di Castellana. They are pleasant, but there are no mountains anywhere nearby.

Both cities make excellent bases, but the trips they offer are different in kind. Bari's lead into small towns and rural Puglia. Matera's cave dwellings and rock churches are about an hour and a half away by train, the trulli of Alberobello and the white towns of Ostuni and Locorotondo fill the Valle d'Itria, and Trani's pale cathedral stands right on the sea. Frederick II's octagonal Castel del Monte and baroque Lecce complete the list.

Catania's trips lead to Greek theatres, Roman mosaics and baroque showpieces. Ortigia and the Neapolis theatre in Siracusa lie about an hour south, and Taormina's ancient theatre looks over the sea about an hour north. Further out are the mosaics of the Villa Romana del Casale and the baroque circuit of Noto, Modica and Ragusa Ibla. In both regions a hire car makes the inland towns far easier than the slow trains and buses.

Bari is the easier city for everyday life with children. It has a sandy city beach, traffic-free lanes in the old town and a small, flat centre you can cover on foot. For outings, the Fasano safari park and the Grotte di Castellana are close by.

Catania asks more of parents in town, with narrow, uneven pavements, heavy traffic and little shade, but its excursions are bigger. Older children tend to love walking on Etna's old craters, the sand at La Playa shelves gently, and Etnaland's water park fills a hot afternoon. In both cities the midday summer heat means planning around a long break.

Bari is noticeably simpler. Its old town, shopping streets and promenade join up on flat ground, a train runs to the airport, and the city is the hub of regional railways to Polignano, Trani, Matera and Alberobello, even if some of those lines are slow.

In Catania the walkable part ends at the edge of the historic centre. The single metro line covers little, buses crawl in traffic, and drivers do not always stop for pedestrians. Regional buses do reach Siracusa, Taormina and the Etna refuge, but many visitors end up driving and then struggle to park.

Neither is a shopping destination, and in both the best souvenirs are edible. Bari's version is tidy: Via Sparano's pedestrian chains and a few boutiques, plus taralli, dried orecchiette and Puglian ceramics.

Catania's is more theatrical. You can browse Via Etnea's long run of stores, but the noisy La Fiera market is more fun, and you can take home Bronte pistachio cream, Etna wine and Caltagirone pottery.

Costs are much the same: cheap street food, fair trattorias, free old towns to wander, and rooms that cost noticeably more in July and August. What differs is where the extras come from. In Bari it is beach clubs and a car for the Valle d'Itria. In Catania, guided trips to Etna's summit craters are the big expense, though the city's buses and metro cost little.

Each city has a grand opera house as its anchor. Bari's Teatro Petruzzelli is one of Italy's largest, with a season of opera, ballet and concerts, and a long-running summer jazz festival uses the piazzas and the castle.

Catania has more local character. It is Bellini's birthplace, with the Teatro Massimo Bellini and a museum to the composer. Small companies keep up the opera dei pupi marionette tradition, and summer concerts move into ancient theatres in the region. Outside opera, both cities are thin for visitors who don't speak Italian.

Neither city is built for pampering. There are no thermal baths, spas are mostly in hotels, and rest comes from long lunches and the evening passeggiata. Bari is the calmer of the two, and its escape is a restored country estate outside the city. Catania's centre is noisier, so people who want quiet head for resorts on the coast or villages on Etna's slopes.