Catania or Rome?

Catania is a real beach city and Rome is not. Catania has broad sand at La Playa just south of the centre and black lava rock to the north, where you climb down ladders at Aci Castello and Aci Trezza into very clear water beside the basalt stacks.

From Rome the sea means a suburban train to Ostia's paid lidos on dark sand, or to Fregene, and the water is rarely clear. Romans use these beaches as a weekend escape. Anything as pretty as Catania's lava coast needs a longer trip down to Sperlonga.

Both are first-rate places to eat, and the difference is in the kind of food. Catania is a street-food city: cone-shaped arancini, fried crispelle, horse meat grilled on Via Plebiscito, and granita with brioche for breakfast. La Pescheria supplies the trattorias with the morning's fish, and Etna's volcanic wines are far more interesting than anything grown near Rome.

Rome's strength is its own cooking, eaten in plain trattorias: the four classic pastas, Jewish-style artichokes in the Ghetto, and offal in Testaccio, with pizza al taglio and supplì for snacks. Food close to the big sights is dull, so it pays to eat in Trastevere, Monti or Testaccio.

Here the gap is wide. Catania has a fine late-baroque centre built of lava stone, with the elephant fountain, Via dei Crociferi and the vast Benedictine monastery, plus Roman fragments and Castello Ursino. Its museums are modest, though, and two or three days covers the city.

Rome has ancient, early Christian, Renaissance and Baroque layers stacked on top of each other, along with the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel, the Borghese and the Capitoline. Even a week in Rome means choosing what to leave out.

Both cities spend their evenings outdoors with a drink rather than in big clubs. Catania's nights are younger and later, driven by its university and centred on the bar lanes around Piazza Bellini. In summer the La Playa beach clubs turn into open-air dance floors.

Rome spreads its evenings over more districts, each with its own crowd: aperitivo and wine bars in Trastevere, small cocktail bars in Monti, student bars in San Lorenzo and an arty crowd in Pigneto. There is a small club scene in Testaccio and Ostiense. It stays steady all year, while Catania goes quiet in winter.

Catania lives in the shadow of an active volcano, and that gives it the edge. Etna rises to about 3,300m and can be reached in under an hour, with cable cars, lava trails, beech woods and even winter skiing with a view of the sea. The Alcantara Gorge and the snorkelling along the lava coast add to that.

Rome's outdoors is gentler and mostly man-made: the villa parks, cycling along the Appian Way and the crater lakes of the Alban Hills. Real mountains in the Apennines are about ninety minutes away.

Both cities make excellent bases, and Rome edges ahead because so much is easy to reach by train. Ostia Antica and Tivoli are close, Orvieto and the Etruscan tombs lie to the north, and high-speed trains put Florence and Naples about ninety minutes away.

From Catania you can reach Siracusa's Ortigia and Taormina's theatre in about an hour each, plus the baroque towns of Noto, Modica and Ragusa and the mosaics at Piazza Armerina. The catch is that the baroque circuit is far easier with a hire car.

Neither city is easy with children, but the outings are different. Catania offers sand that shelves gently at La Playa, crater walks on Etna and the Etnaland water park, so it suits a beach-based summer with older children.

Rome keeps children interested with gladiators, catacombs, the Bioparco zoo and boating in Villa Borghese. Queues at the big sights and cobbles that are hard on pushchairs make it tiring, so plan a slow spring or autumn visit.

Both cities are best seen on foot, and Rome is the easier of the two. Its walkable core runs from the Colosseum to Trastevere, the metro reaches the Vatican and Termini, and trains cover most day trips, so you never need a car.

Catania's centre along Via Etnea is small and walkable. Beyond it there is a single metro line, slow buses and drivers who do not always stop for pedestrians. Many visitors hire a car for Etna and the baroque towns, then struggle to park it.

Rome is far better for shopping. The fashion houses line Via Condotti below the Spanish Steps, Monti has independent boutiques and vintage, and Via Margutta has artisan workshops. Porta Portese adds a huge Sunday flea market.

Catania offers chain stores on Via Etnea and the La Fiera market. Its best souvenirs are things to eat and drink, such as Bronte pistachio cream and Etna wine, along with Caltagirone ceramics.

Catania stretches a budget much further. Street food makes a full meal for little money, rooms in the old centre are reasonably priced for most of the year, and the baroque streets are free to wander. The real costs are summer rooms, beach-club sunbeds, guided trips to the summit craters and a hire car.

In Rome the expense comes mainly from small, costly rooms in the centre and high entry fees at the Vatican, the Colosseum and the Borghese. Standing espresso, pizza al taglio and the free drinking fountains help keep daily spending down.

Rome has more to offer in the evenings. There is opera and ballet at the Teatro dell'Opera, summer opera in the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, the Santa Cecilia orchestra at the Auditorium, a long-running jazz club scene and concerts in churches.

Catania has fewer performances but a special connection to opera as Bellini's birthplace, with seasons at the Teatro Massimo Bellini. It also keeps the Sicilian marionette tradition of the opera dei pupi alive, although it has nothing like enough to fill a week of evenings.

Neither is a place for rest, but Rome gives you more ways to slow down. The thermal pools at Bagni di Tivoli are close, there are free open-air hot springs near Viterbo, and the villa gardens and the Aventine offer quiet in the city.

Catania has no bathing tradition, and spas there mean hotels on the coast or on Etna's lower slopes. If calm matters most, stay in one of the quieter villages on the volcano rather than in the noisy centre.