Bratislava or Brno?

Neither city is a place for a beach vacation, and both send their swimmers to lakes on hot summer days. Bratislava's Zlate piesky has a sandy shore on the tram line, with the larger Senec lakes half an hour out for a weekend.

Brno's equivalent is the reservoir on the Svratka, with grassy banks and a river boat, though algae can spoil the water in hot spells. Its wider choice, the Nove Mlyny lakes under the Palava hills, is about an hour away.

Both serve hearty Central European cooking in pubs with good lager, and both sit near their own vineyards. Bratislava has Slovak specialities such as bryndzove halusky and the poppy-seed Bratislava rolls, with house-brewed beer and Small Carpathian Veltliner and Frankovka poured in wine bars on the city's doorstep.

Brno's food is the Czech classics of svickova and roast pork, but its drinking culture runs wider, with specialty coffee and serious cocktail bars alongside Moravian wine. The Zelny trh morning market adds fresh produce, while in Bratislava the best meals take a step away from the tourist menus on the central squares.

Bratislava's sights are a compact royal story: the cathedral where Hungarian kings were crowned, the brass crowns marking their route, the Primate's Palace and the castle above, plus the cliff-top ruins of Devin. It is charming and done in a day or two.

Brno gives a culture-minded visitor more to chew on. Villa Tugendhat is a UNESCO-listed landmark of modern architecture, and whole districts of functionalist buildings surround it. Add the Spilberk fortress, the Capuchin Crypt, the ossuary under St James's and the abbey where Mendel founded genetics, and the city holds a curious visitor longer.

The two are close in size of scene but different in character. Bratislava's Old Town fills on Friday and Saturday with pubs, wine bars and visiting groups, stag parties among them, and goes quiet in the week.

Brno's nights follow the university term rather than the weekend, centred on Jakubske namesti and known for small, carefully run cocktail bars hidden behind unmarked doors. It empties noticeably in July and August, when Bratislava's riverside terraces are at their busiest.

The outdoors are equally good in both, but the landscapes differ. Bratislava has wooded hills straight from the city, with beech-forest trails up to the Kamzik tower, and the Danube's floodplain forests and flat cycle route into Austria, plus whitewater rafting at Cunovo.

Brno's highlight lies half an hour north in the Moravian Karst, a limestone country of caves, underground rivers and the 138m Macocha Abyss. To the south it has the Palava ridge and the Dyje valley of Podyji National Park, so it offers more variety, while Bratislava's green space starts closer to the centre.

Both are superb bases, and they even share one destination in the Lednice-Valtice chateaux and parkland. Bratislava's trump card is Vienna about an hour away, by train or boat, with Austria's Carnuntum and Lake Neusiedl and Hungary's Pannonhalma abbey also in range.

Brno's strength is depth rather than a single star. Kromeriz, Trebic, Telc and Zelena Hora are all UNESCO sites within an hour or two, along with the Austerlitz battlefield, Baroque Olomouc and the wine towns of Mikulov and Znojmo. Vienna and Bratislava are each about an hour and a half by train.

Both are safe and calm with children, but Brno has more built for them. The VIDA science centre is hands-on, the Anthropos pavilion brings mammoths and cave dwellers to life, there is a planetarium on Kravi hora, and the Punkva Caves boat trip is the outing children remember best.

Bratislava relies more on the outdoors: the playgrounds and chairlift around Kamzik, the hillside zoo, statue-spotting in the Old Town and the water park at Senec. That fills a short stay well, but a longer family trip runs out of ideas sooner than in Brno.

Both centres are small enough to walk, and neither has a metro. Bratislava's sights lie within a twenty-minute walk, but its station sits on a rise above the Old Town, and trips across the river or to the suburbs are slower than they look.

Brno is easier. Its station is right at the edge of the old town, a dense tram network reaches Villa Tugendhat, the zoo and the reservoir, and night buses cover the late hours. Its one ticket also covers regional trains across South Moravia, which makes day trips much simpler.

For a souvenir with a story, Bratislava has the edge. The state folk-craft centre sells genuine Slovak handwork, from Modra majolica to lace and blue-print cloth, and when the riverside malls feel generic, Vienna's boutique streets are only a train ride away.

Brno's centre is mostly high-street chains on Ceska and Masarykova, with a scattering of independent vintage, design and bookshops in the old town's arcades. Its best buys are things to eat and drink: Moravian wine bought straight from the cellars on a day out, and seasonal produce and flowers from the Zelny trh market. In Bratislava the bottle to take home is Small Carpathian wine.

Both are cheap by Western standards, with low-cost beer, wine, transport and museums, but Brno stretches a budget a little further. Mid-range rooms and pub lunch menus there cost very little, and only the specialty coffee and cocktail bars charge noticeably more.

Bratislava is still good value, though its main Old Town squares and the glass-fronted riverside complexes price meals more like a Western city. Rooms also climb on busy summer weekends, while in Brno it is the big trade fairs that fill the hotels.

Brno has the richer stage life, thanks to Janacek, who lived and worked there. Its National Theatre runs three houses, with his operas at the heart of the repertoire in the Janacek Theatre, and the old Reduta where the young Mozart played. Big musicals and a long-standing experimental stage add range.

Bratislava's evening is simpler: opera and ballet at the Slovak National Theatre on Hviezdoslav Square and the Slovak Philharmonic in its own Reduta, with easy tickets and a solid standard. For a bigger programme its visitors go to Vienna.

Neither city has thermal springs of its own, but Bratislava makes it easier to find a spa day. The water park at Senec is half an hour away, and Piestany, a historic spa town famed for mud and sulphur-water cures, is about an hour by train.

Brno has no spa tradition to draw on, so unwinding means swimming complexes with saunas, hotel spas and quiet afternoons in Luzanky park or on the Spilberk slopes. It is a calm city to slow down in, just without the baths.