Bologna or Venice?

Venice has a beach of its own: the Lido, a short vaporetto ride from San Marco, with kilometres of fine sand on the open Adriatic and quieter stretches out towards Pellestrina. It is mostly rows of cabanas, and the water is greenish, but you can easily fit a hot afternoon there into a city stay.

Bologna is inland, so a swim means a train of about an hour to Rimini or Cervia. There you find the same warm, shallow, greenish sea, lined with rented umbrellas. It works for one day out of the heat, not as part of everyday life.

Bologna is the stronger city for eating, and for many visitors it is the reason to go. Tagliatelle al ragù, tortellini in brodo and mortadella are cooked in family trattorias, pasta is rolled in shop windows, and Parmigiano and Parma ham come from towns close by. The Quadrilatero market lanes are a treat to wander.

Venice eats differently, standing at the counter of a bacaro with cicchetti and a spritz, and the Rialto market supplies lagoon dishes such as cuttlefish risotto. The trouble is the many poor restaurants on the routes around San Marco, so a good meal takes some searching. Neither city offers much beyond its own regional cooking.

Venice is in another league. The whole city is a monument on water, and behind the Basilica and the Grand Canal lies a huge body of art: Venetian painting at the Accademia, Titian in the Frari, Tintoretto at San Rocco, and modern collections at the Guggenheim and Punta della Dogana.

Bologna's appeal is a large, intact medieval centre in red brick, with UNESCO-listed porticoes, the Two Towers, Santo Stefano and the anatomical theatre of Europe's oldest university. It is rewarding but compact, and two or three days cover it.

Bologna's students give it a proper night out. Piazza Verdi fills with crowds outside cheap bars, and Via del Pratello's taverns stay busy late, though real clubbing means a taxi out of the centre and August goes quiet.

In Venice the best of the evening is the aperitivo along the Misericordia canal and around the Rialto. After that only Campo Santa Margherita stays busy for long, and by midnight the canals are dark and silent.

Bologna has more ground to walk on. The arcaded path up to San Luca and the trails of the Colli Bolognesi start from the edge of town, the Via degli Dei sets off for Florence from Piazza Maggiore, and the Apennines reach 2,000m within a couple of hours.

In Venice the outdoors is flat and watery. Kayaking or Venetian rowing in the northern lagoon around Torcello brings herons and flamingos, and you can cycle the sea walls of Pellestrina, but real hills mean a trip to the Euganean Hills or beyond.

Both cities make superb bases, and Bologna has the edge thanks to its rail junction. Florence is barely half an hour by fast train, and Ravenna's mosaics, Ferrara, Modena and Parma are all close, with Verona and Venice itself within reach.

Venice looks towards the Veneto instead: Padua's Scrovegni Chapel, Palladio's Vicenza, Verona and the Brenta villas. It also has trips that need no train at all, to the glass furnaces of Murano, the painted houses of Burano and lonely Torcello.

Both are manageable with children rather than built for them, but in different ways. Bologna is flat, mostly free of traffic and shaded by its porticoes. It has few attractions for children, so families tend to add Mirabilandia or the beach at Rimini.

Venice has more magic: boat rides, glass-blowing on Murano and the shallow Lido beach. On the other hand, its stepped bridges make pushchairs a constant struggle, which makes it better for older children on a short stay.

Bologna is the easier city to get around. The centre is small and flat, the porticoes keep you in the shade or out of the rain, buses cover the hills, and the station sits right on the edge of the old town.

Venice is also a city for walking, but it is harder going. Alleys twist and stop dead at canals, hundreds of bridges have steps that wheeled luggage hates, and the vaporetto is slow and crowded on the main lines.

Neither city is a shopping destination, and what you take home differs. In Bologna it is food: mortadella, aged Parmigiano and balsamic vinegar from the Quadrilatero, plus a small luxury cluster on Via Farini and weekend antiques in Piazza Santo Stefano.

In Venice it is craft: Murano glass, Burano lace, papier-mâché masks and marbled paper. Look for workshops where you can see the work being done, because the main routes are full of cheap imports.

Bologna is clearly the cheaper stay. Good trattoria meals and generous aperitivo cost less than in Italy's tourist hubs, and the sights are mostly free. Rooms are the expense, especially during trade fairs.

Venice is among the dearest cities in Italy. Hotel rooms, entry to the main sights and boat travel all cost a lot. Eating cicchetti at the counter, staying in Cannaregio or Mestre, and coming in late autumn or winter all help.

Both have a historic opera house at the centre of the scene, the Teatro Comunale in Bologna and La Fenice in Venice, each with full seasons of opera, ballet and concerts. Around that they differ. Bologna, a UNESCO City of Music, adds basement jazz clubs, student indie gigs and summer concerts in Piazza Maggiore.

Venice offers baroque Vivaldi in churches and scuole grandi, plus the Biennale's festivals of contemporary music, theatre and dance. It has little in the way of jazz or rock.

Neither city has its own bathing culture, and both rely on hotel spas and nearby thermal towns. Bologna's spa is closer, with the pools of Castel San Pietro Terme about twenty minutes away and Porretta Terme in an Apennine valley.

Venice's thermal option is Abano Terme, about an hour away, known for its mud treatments. The city's real calm is the silence of a place without traffic, best found early or late in Castello or on Giudecca.