Chamonix or Zermatt?

Chamonix at least gives you somewhere to swim. Lac de Passy, lower down the Arve valley, has a grassy shore and a sandy strip facing Mont Blanc, and Lake Annecy is close enough for a warm summer day out.

Zermatt has nothing like it. The tarns above the village are meltwater and stay too cold for a proper swim even in high summer, so swimming means a hotel pool.

The food is equally good in both, but the regional cooking differs. Chamonix serves Savoyard dishes such as tartiflette and croziflette with Reblochon and Beaufort and Savoie whites, and its large international crowd keeps plenty of bistros, burger places and pizzerias in business alongside the cheese shops and charcuteries.

Zermatt cooks Valais food, with air-dried beef, rye bread and apricot desserts, and pours Petite Arvine and Cornalin. Its best meals are long lunches in old chalets in hamlets such as Findeln, Furi and Zum See, reached on skis or on foot. In both places many restaurants close between seasons.

Both have small heritage sights about mountaineering, which take a morning or so. Chamonix tells the bigger story: the birthplace of alpinism after the first ascent of Mont Blanc in 1786, and host of the first Winter Olympics, with the Musée Alpin housed in a Belle Époque palace hotel.

Zermatt's story is the Matterhorn's first ascent in 1865 and the disaster on the way down, told in a museum built as an underground reconstruction of the old village. The larch-wood barns of the Hinterdorf, raised on stone slabs, give it an old farming corner that Chamonix lacks.

Chamonix has the livelier nights. After après-ski the crowd moves to a narrow old-town lane of pubs and bars, where guides, seasonal workers and visitors stay out late, and two or three small clubs keep going after that.

Zermatt's evenings are cheerful but costly, mostly slope-side bars and a few places on the main street on winter weekends. In summer both towns go quiet, and Zermatt more so, since most of its hikers turn in after dinner.

For the mountains themselves you can hardly separate them. Chamonix offers more different ways in, from the Aiguille du Midi at 3,842m and the Vallée Blanche glacier run to the start of the Tour du Mont Blanc, rock climbing, via ferrata and paragliding down to the meadows.

Zermatt has the single most famous peak, with dozens of other four-thousanders around it. It also has skiing that crosses into Italy and glacier pistes that stay open in summer. Its trails take in the Five Lakes walk and the suspension bridge on the Europaweg, and the valley is where the Haute Route ends.

For days away from the mountains, Chamonix is far better placed. Through the Mont Blanc Tunnel, Courmayeur and the Roman walls and theatre of Aosta are close, and Annecy and Geneva are each a little over an hour away. The Mont Blanc Express also runs over to Martigny in Switzerland.

From Zermatt every outing starts with the long train ride down the valley. Sion, with its two castle hills set among the vineyards, is the best of them, and Brig and Saas-Fee are within reach. Most visitors simply stay up in the mountains instead.

Chamonix has more for children to do: the Merlet animal park, a summer luge, treetop adventure courses and the little red train to the Mer de Glace, all in a small town that is easy to walk.

Zermatt's car-free streets mean you never have to watch for traffic, and the Sunnegga side has gentle nursery slopes. Beyond that there is little for children apart from marmots and a playground lake, and wet days are hard to fill. In both places the highest viewpoints are too high for small children.

Zermatt is the easier place to get around. With no ordinary cars, you walk everywhere, and the Gornergrat railway, the underground funicular to Sunnegga and the gondolas all leave from near the centre. The catches are steep walks with luggage to hotels on the edges, and over an hour by train to leave the valley.

Chamonix's centre is just as walkable, and the guest card makes buses and the valley train free. Its ski areas are spread along the valley, though, so winter days mean crowded ski buses, and a car helps for trips over the border.

Both towns are best for mountain gear. In Chamonix there are outdoor shops that go back generations, plus génépi and rock crystals from the massif. Zermatt's main street adds Swiss watch and jewellery boutiques for wealthy skiers, along with cowbells and chocolate. For fashion, Chamonix visitors go to Geneva or Annecy, which are much closer than anything comparable from Zermatt.

Neither is cheap, but Chamonix is the easier one to manage. The free valley transport, trails that start without a lift, and quieter months in late spring and autumn all help keep costs under control.

Zermatt is among the most expensive places in the Alps. Even plain rooms, a terrace drink or a ride on the cog railway cost a lot. Self-catering helps, and staying down the valley in Täsch saves on beds.

Zermatt has the stronger festivals, though neither place has a regular season. Zermatt Unplugged brings well-known singers to acoustic stages in spring, and a late-summer chamber music festival puts serious classical players in the village church.

Chamonix's main event is a summer jazz festival with some sets played high in the mountains. For the rest of the year there are occasional church concerts and mountain film evenings, and for opera you go to Geneva.

They are equally good for unwinding, but in different ways. Chamonix has real bathing: a large day spa with hot outdoor pools looking up at the glaciers, and the old thermal springs of Saint-Gervais in a wooded gorge down the valley.

Zermatt has no springs. Instead it has many excellent hotel spas, a few of which sell day passes, and a car-free village whose quiet makes evenings calmer than in Chamonix's busier streets.