Catania or Matera?

Catania has the sea built into city life, and Matera does not. In Catania you can choose between the long sandy strip of La Playa, with its beach clubs, just south of the centre, and the black lava coast to the north. At Aci Castello and Aci Trezza you climb down ladders into clear water beside the basalt sea stacks.

From Matera the beach is a planned outing. The wide, pine-backed sands around Metaponto and Policoro are about 45 minutes by car, calm and shallow and very good for small children, but without a car most visitors never get there.

Catania is the more exciting place to eat. Its strength is food on the move: cone-shaped arancini, fried crispelle and pastries from the tavola calda counters, smoky grills in the evening and granita with brioche for breakfast. The Pescheria behind the cathedral supplies the trattorias around it, and Etna's volcanic wines are a real discovery.

Matera eats more simply. Its food is the hearty peasant cooking of Basilicata: the horn-shaped bread, crapiata, cavatelli, roast lamb and crackling peperoni cruschi with Aglianico. It is satisfying, but it is mostly a sit-down dinner, often in a cave room, with no street food or market life to graze through.

Matera has the more remarkable sightseeing, even though there is less of it. The Sassi of Caveoso and Barisano climb the gorge in layers of cave houses and carved churches, with frescoed rock chapels such as Santa Maria de Idris and the walk-through Palombaro Lungo cistern beneath the main square. It feels like nowhere else in Italy.

Catania offers a grand baroque townscape in black lava and pale limestone instead. Highlights are Piazza del Duomo with its elephant fountain, the line of churches on Via dei Crociferi, the vast San Nicolò monastery, and Roman remains surfacing between the buildings. It is handsome and part of a UNESCO group, but its museums are modest and it lacks Matera's sense of entering another age.

This is one of the starkest gaps between the two. Catania's university crowd keeps the lanes around Piazza Bellini and Via Gemmellaro full of outdoor drinkers well past midnight, and in summer the La Playa beach clubs turn into open-air dance floors.

Matera's evening is a passeggiata on Via del Corso, a long dinner and perhaps a cocktail in a cave bar overlooking the lit Sassi. That is lovely for a couple, but there are no clubs, and outside summer the town empties soon after dinner.

Etna gives Catania the bigger outdoor draw. You can take the cable car and off-road vehicles from Rifugio Sapienza towards the summit craters, walk across lava flows and through birch woods, and even ski with a sea view in winter. Add the wadeable Alcantara Gorge and snorkelling or kayaking among the sea stacks, and the range is wide.

Matera's nature is gentler and closer to hand. A path drops from Sasso Caveoso into the Gravina gorge and climbs to the Murgia plateau, with its abandoned rock churches and Neolithic sites, without any transport at all. The Lucanian Dolomites and Pollino need a car and a longer day.

Both are excellent bases, with Catania slightly ahead. From Catania you reach Greek and baroque Sicily: Ortigia and the Neapolis in Siracusa, Taormina's theatre, the baroque trio of Noto, Modica and Ragusa Ibla, and the mosaics at Piazza Armerina. Buses cover the main towns.

Matera's outings cross into Puglia, which gives them a different flavour. The trulli of Alberobello, the white towns of the Valle d'Itria, Castel del Monte and Polignano a Mare are all about an hour away, and in Basilicata there are ghostly Craco and the mountain villages of Castelmezzano and Pietrapertosa. Almost every one of them needs a car.

Catania gives children more to do, mostly outside the city. There is the gently shelving sand at La Playa, crater walks on Etna and the Etnaland theme and water park for a hot day. The centre itself is wearing, with heavy traffic, narrow pavements and little shade.

Matera is harder going with young ones. Older children love the caves, the cistern and the scramble into the gorge, but the Sassi are all steep stone steps where a pushchair is useless, and the nearest beach is a drive away. A short stay with a baby carrier works best.

The two are broadly level. Both are easy on foot at the centre and awkward beyond it. Catania's main sights are close enough together that a day of sightseeing needs no transport. For longer journeys there is a metro line, regional buses to Siracusa, Taormina and up to the Etna refuge, and the slow Circumetnea railway around the volcano. What wears you down is the city itself: heavy traffic, drivers who do not always stop at crossings and very little parking.

Matera is quieter underfoot, because cars are kept out of most of the Sassi, but walking there means climbing. Steep stairways link the flat upper town to the cave districts. Leaving town is harder still. There is no mainline railway, only a slow narrow-gauge line to Bari and few buses, so a hire car matters even more than in Catania.

Catania offers more, though neither is a shopping destination. Via Etnea gives you a long run of Italian chains, and La Fiera and the Pescheria are markets worth visiting for the spectacle alone. To take home there are Bronte pistachio creams, Etna wines and Caltagirone ceramics.

Matera's shopping fits into a few workshops in the Sassi selling the painted cuccù whistle, tufa carvings and papier-mâché, plus an ordinary high street. Its dried peppers and local pasta are the best souvenirs.

The two cost broadly the same, but the savings fall in different places. In Catania the cheapest eating is street food, which can feed you all day for very little, and the city buses are inexpensive. Costs rise with summer rooms, beach-club sunbeds and guided trips to Etna's summit.

In Matera the simple trattorias of the upper town are good value and walking the Sassi and the Murgia costs nothing. The town's famous cave hotels are expensive, though, so staying in the newer town a short walk away saves a lot. In both places a hire car is the biggest extra.

Catania clearly has more on stage. As Bellini's birthplace it has the Teatro Massimo Bellini, a grand opera house with a proper opera and symphonic season, and small companies still perform the opera dei pupi with its marionette knights and Saracens. In summer there are concerts in courtyards and ancient theatres.

Matera has conservatory concerts, a summer jazz festival and open-air events against the Sassi, while the Festa della Bruna, when the papier-mâché float is torn apart, is its one great night. On most evenings the entertainment is the view.

Neither is a spa destination, and neither has a thermal tradition, but the calm comes in different forms. Catania is noisy and traffic-heavy. Its spas are in resorts along the coast and on Etna's lower slopes, and the volcano's villages make a quieter base.

Matera is restful by nature once the day groups leave. Some hotel spas have candlelit pools cut into the rock, and early mornings in the Sassi are quiet. The cooler months from autumn to spring are the most peaceful time to visit.