Catania or Sorrento?

Catania gives you two kinds of swimming. La Playa is a long, broad strip of sand with beach clubs, and the Riviera dei Ciclopi offers swimming off lava platforms into clear water beside the basalt sea stacks at Aci Trezza. Sorrento has no sand of its own at all.

In Sorrento you swim from wooden piers at Marina Piccola and Marina Grande, or off the rocks at the Bagni della Regina Giovanna. The water is deep and lovely, but space is tight and mostly paid. For a pebble beach you need a bus to Marina del Cantone or a boat to Capri.

Catania is the stronger eating city, built on street food: cone-shaped arancini, fried crispelle, scacciata, granita with brioche for breakfast and pistachios from Bronte. La Pescheria and its trattorias give the city a daily food ritual, and Etna's volcanic wines are a real discovery.

Sorrento's cooking is lovely but narrower. Its staples are gnocchi alla sorrentina, fish all'acqua pazza, local mozzarella and lemons in everything. The main squares are thick with tourist menus, so the good meals take some seeking out on the back lanes and at Marina Grande. Where Sorrento wins is high-end dining, as the hill villages of the peninsula hold restaurants of a level Catania's small fine-dining scene does not match.

Catania is a sightseeing city in its own right. Its late-baroque centre, rebuilt in lava stone after 1693, is UNESCO-listed, with Via dei Crociferi, the vast San Nicolò l'Arena monastery, a Roman theatre and the amphitheatre sunk below Piazza Stesicoro. Visit in early February and you can see the huge Feast of Sant'Agata.

Sorrento's own sights fill a gentle day: the cloister of San Francesco, the Museo Correale, the Sedile Dominova and the strange ravine of the Vallone dei Mulini. Its real cultural weight lies in the excursions beyond the town.

Catania has a genuine night out, powered by its university. On warm nights the lanes around Piazza Bellini and Via Gemmellaro fill with drinkers well past midnight, and in summer the La Playa beach clubs turn into open-air dance floors.

Sorrento's evenings are a passeggiata on Corso Italia, a cocktail on a terrace over the bay, or a piano bar playing Neapolitan songs. It is pleasant but over early. Because the last trains and ferries leave in the evening, a late night in Naples or on Capri means staying over.

Both are superb for the outdoors, but in different ways. Catania's draw is an active volcano. You can ride the cable car from the Rifugio Sapienza towards Etna's summit craters at about 3,300m, walk across recent lava flows, wade the Alcantara Gorge and even ski with a sea view in winter.

Sorrento's strength is coastal walking along a limestone ridge of olive and lemon terraces. The paths run to Punta Campanella and the protected bay of Ieranto, and the Path of the Gods and Monte Faito are close by. Vesuvius is a dormant crater rim to look into rather than a smoking summit, and boat trips round Capri's grottoes take the place of Catania's kayaking among the sea stacks.

Sorrento is hard to beat as a base. Pompeii is about half an hour away by train, and Herculaneum and Vesuvius fit into the same trip. Capri is under an hour by ferry, summer boats run to Positano and Amalfi, and Naples and its archaeological museum are about an hour off. All of it works without a car.

Catania's list is also long: Siracusa and Ortigia, Taormina's theatre, the baroque towns of Noto, Modica and Ragusa Ibla, and the mosaics at Piazza Armerina. The distances are greater, though, and the baroque circuit really calls for a hire car.

Catania is a little better for children, mainly because of La Playa's gently shelving sand. Etnaland's water park fills a hot day, and older children love walking on old craters. The city itself is tiring, with heavy traffic, narrow pavements and little shade.

Sorrento's flat, largely pedestrian centre is easier with a pushchair, and boat trips and Pompeii go down well. But swimming is off piers into deep water, and many hotels sit on steep lanes with no pavements, so families often end up relying on the hotel pool.

Sorrento is the easier place to manage without a car. The centre is flat, lifts run down to the marinas, and the train, buses and ferries reach the main sights. The Circumvesuviana is crowded and the Amalfi buses are slow, but ferries usually make up for it.

Catania's compact core around Via Etnea and Piazza del Duomo is fine on foot. Beyond it you have a single metro line, slow buses and drivers who ignore crossings. Many visitors hire a car for Etna and the baroque towns, then struggle to park in the centre.

Neither city is a shopping destination, and the difference is in what you bring home. In Catania that means markets and food. La Fiera is a loud daily market, Via Etnea has the Italian chains, and the best buys are pistachio cream, Etna wine and Caltagirone ceramics.

Sorrento leans towards craft: intarsia boxes and trays, leather sandals made to measure while you wait, linen and cameos, alongside a great deal of lemon-themed souvenirs. For serious fashion, people go to Capri or Naples.

Catania is clearly the cheaper stay. Street food and market lunches cost little, rooms in the old centre are fair for most of the year, and its biggest sights are free streets and churches. Costs do rise in July and August, and summit trips on Etna and car hire add up.

Sorrento charges full resort prices in summer for sea-view rooms, terrace restaurants, lido sunbeds and private boats. It becomes manageable if you stick to trains, buses and back-lane pizzerias, or travel in spring and late autumn.

As Bellini's birthplace, Catania has a working opera house, the grand Teatro Massimo Bellini, with a season of opera and symphonic concerts that visitors can book. Its tradition of opera dei pupi marionette theatre still survives, and summer brings concerts to ancient theatres.

Sorrento offers Neapolitan song and tarantella shows staged for visitors, chamber concerts in the cloister of San Francesco and singers in hotel bars. For real opera, it means an evening trip to the San Carlo in Naples.

Sorrento is the more restful of the two. Its cliff hotels have spas, pools and terraces over the bay, and the villa gardens and lemon groves slow the day down. Ischia's hot-spring thermal gardens are a ferry ride away, though the centre is noisy in high summer.

Catania has no bathing tradition. Its spas are mostly in coastal and hillside resorts, and the centre is loud. Rest there comes from long lunches and slow breakfasts, or from staying in a quiet village on Etna's slopes.