Catania or Milan?

Catania has a real choice of coast. La Playa is the easy option, a long sandy beach lined with clubs. The more striking option is the black lava shore around Aci Castello and Aci Trezza, where you climb down ladders into clear water facing the basalt sea stacks.

Milan is landlocked, and summer swimming means the Idroscalo basin, the city's open-air pools or a train to the pebbly lidos of Lake Como and Lake Maggiore. The lakes are lovely, but a swim there is an occasional day out, never part of daily life as it is in Catania.

Both are excellent places to eat, but in opposite ways. Catania is at its best in the street and the market: cone-shaped arancini, horse meat grilled on Via Plebiscito, granita with brioche for breakfast and the morning's catch from La Pescheria, with Etna's volcanic wines to drink alongside.

Milan eats richer and more formally, with saffron risotto, ossobuco and cotoletta, a serious fine-dining tier and good cooking from every Italian region. The ritual to plan around is aperitivo in the Navigli, Brera or Isola. Here, cheap eating is the weaker side.

Milan has the bigger cultural sights. Leonardo's Last Supper, the marble Duomo with its rooftop among the spires, the paintings of the Brera and Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà at the Castello would each justify a trip on their own. The catch is that they come in clusters within a largely modern city.

Catania offers an unbroken late-baroque townscape of dark lava stone, part of the UNESCO-listed Val di Noto group, with Via dei Crociferi and the vast San Nicolò l'Arena monastery. Its museums are modest, though, and two or three days see the centre.

Milan has the wider and more polished night out. Aperitivo along the Navigli leads on to Brera's smarter bars, the relaxed and gay-friendly streets of Porta Venezia, and clubs ranging from dressy Corso Como to warehouse nights on the edge of town.

Catania goes out late and loudly in its own informal way, with students drinking outside small bars around Piazza Bellini and Via Gemmellaro. In summer the party moves to dance floors at the beach clubs of La Playa, just when Milan empties out for August.

Etna gives Catania the stronger outdoors. You can ride the cable car from the Rifugio Sapienza, walk across lava flows and extinct side craters, or ski within sight of the sea in winter. The Alcantara Gorge and snorkelling around the sea stacks add more.

Milan itself sits on the flat Po plain, with parks and canal towpaths for cycling. The real scenery begins about an hour north, at the lakes and on the Grigne ridges, and you reach it by train.

Both are fine bases, but Milan's rail links give it the edge. Verona, Turin, Bergamo's upper town and Lake Como's villages are each about an hour away by train, so a different city every day is realistic without a car.

Catania's list is just as tempting, with Ortigia in Siracusa, Taormina's theatre and the baroque towns of Noto, Modica and Ragusa. Buses cover the main towns, but the baroque circuit and the Piazza Armerina mosaics are far easier with a hire car.

Neither city is built around children, and the appeal differs in kind. Catania works best outdoors, with gently shelving sand at La Playa, crater walks on Etna and Etnaland on a hot day. The city streets are hard going with a pushchair, though.

Milan is easier to move around with its flat centre and trams. For a rainy day there is the science and technology museum with its submarine, and Leolandia and Gardaland are within reach for older children.

Milan is far easier. Five colour-coded metro lines and a dense tram network cover the city, you can tap a contactless card at the gates, and trains run straight from Centrale or Cadorna to the lakes, so no car is needed.

Catania's centre along Via Etnea is walkable, but beyond it you have one metro line, slow buses and drivers who don't always stop for pedestrians. Many visitors end up hiring a car, and then struggle to park it.

For shopping there is no contest. Milan is a world fashion capital, from the flagships around Via Montenapoleone to La Rinascente and the Galleria, with design showrooms, Brera boutiques and Navigli antique markets as well.

Catania offers chain stores on Via Etnea and the noisy La Fiera market. What you take home from Catania is mostly edible, such as Bronte pistachio or Etna wine, plus Caltagirone ceramics.

Catania is clearly the cheaper trip, but its costs fall in different places from Milan's. Day-to-day life in the city is inexpensive, buses and the metro included. What pushes the bill up is the extras. Rooms cost more in July and August, beach-club sunbeds add up over a week, a guided ascent to Etna's summit craters is a real expense, and the hire car most visitors need for Noto, Modica and Ragusa makes a big difference.

In Milan the base cost is the problem. Hotels are dear all year and very hard to find at fair rates during trade fairs and fashion weeks, and dinner in Brera or a cocktail in a stylish bar is priced to match. Getting about is the cheap part, since fairly priced trains and metro replace the car. Office-worker set lunches and an aperitivo spread in place of supper also help.

Milan has La Scala, one of the world's great opera houses, with gallery seats within reach of a determined visitor. Around it are the Piccolo Teatro, a fine symphony orchestra, jazz rooms and big summer concerts at San Siro.

Catania has a real but smaller offering. Bellini's grand opera house holds a season you can actually attend, and opera dei pupi marionette shows are something Milan has no equivalent for. Even so, it won't fill a week of evenings.

Neither is a restful city, but Milan offers a little more within its limits. It has a thermal spa complex with outdoor pools and saunas, and the 1930s open-air Bagni Misteriosi in summer. The calm villas of the lakes are an hour away.

Catania has no bathing tradition, and its spas are in hotels on the coast or on Etna. Its rest comes from the pace of the day: long lunches, the evening passeggiata, or a stay in a quiet village on the volcano.