Chefchaouen or Seville?

Neither is a beach destination, and from both the sea is about an hour and a quarter away. From Chefchaouen it is the Mediterranean at Oued Laou, a grey-sand beach at the end of a winding gorge road, with the cold, shallow river pools at Akchour as the local alternative. From Seville it is the open Atlantic sand of Huelva, with the long beaches of Cádiz beyond, and in town a rooftop or municipal pool is how people cool off in summer.

Food is one of the great pleasures of Seville and a minor part of a stay in Chefchaouen. In Seville you eat tapas standing at tiled bars in Triana or El Arenal with a cold manzanilla, and one evening there gives more variety than Chefchaouen's restaurants manage in a week.

In the blue town the menus repeat tagine, couscous and harira, and the best eating is local: Rif goat cheese from the market, bissara for breakfast and bread from the communal ovens. Alcohol is hard to find, so wine with dinner is something you will have in Seville but rarely in Chefchaouen.

Seville has one of Europe's great historic centres. There are the Mudéjar courtyards of the Alcázar, the Gothic cathedral with the Giralda and the Archivo de Indias, then Plaza de España, Casa de Pilatos and the Murillos at the Bellas Artes. Three or four days still leave things unseen.

In Chefchaouen the culture is the medina itself, a 15th-century town shaped by refugees from Andalusia, so it shares a thread of history with Seville. Its formal sights stop at the kasbah and its small museum, and most visitors have seen everything within a day or two.

This is the starkest difference between the two. Chefchaouen goes quiet after dinner and mint tea in Outa el-Hammam, and alcohol is limited to a couple of hotel bars. Seville sits down to dinner at ten and stays out late on the terraces of the Alameda de Hércules, Triana and the Alfalfa, though it is a city of long evenings in bars rather than clubs.

Chefchaouen has the mountains on its doorstep. Paths climb from Ras el-Maa into the Rif, and Akchour is the entrance to Talassemtane National Park, with its river gorge, God's Bridge, cedar forests and Barbary macaques. Trails are poorly marked, so a local guide helps.

Around Seville the land is flat farmland and orchards. Its best nature is the Doñana wetlands with their flamingos, a guided outing an hour and a half away. In the city itself, outdoor time means María Luisa Park and paddling on the river.

Seville is by far the better base. Córdoba is under an hour by high-speed train, Itálica, Carmona, Jerez and Cádiz all make easy days out, and the white villages and baroque towns lie beyond.

From Chefchaouen, the one outing that really repays the journey is Tetouan and its UNESCO-listed medina, with Martil just beyond. With no railway, Tangier and Fes are better treated as your next stop than as a return trip.

Seville is easier with children, who are welcome in bars and squares late into the evening. María Luisa Park, the maze in the Alcázar gardens and the theme park on La Cartuja give them places of their own. The summer heat is the main difficulty.

Chefchaouen is calm, with little traffic inside the walls, but its steep stairs make pushchairs useless and little in town is aimed at children. Older children will probably enjoy the river pools at Akchour most.

In both cities you get around the centre on foot, but the walking is very different. Seville's centre is flat, and a tram, a metro line, buses and a good bike scheme cover longer hops, so the only real obstacle is the summer heat. Chefchaouen is tiny but built on a slope, so every walk means stairs and slippery steps. Beyond the petit taxis to the gates there is no public transport, and no railway to arrive by.

Both are better for crafts than for fashion, but Seville has more range. There are tiles and ceramics in Triana, flamenco dresses, mantillas and fans around Calle Sierpes, high-street stores, and the Thursday market on Calle Feria, which together fill a full day of browsing.

Chefchaouen's lanes sell Rif blankets, djellabas, leather slippers and blue pigment, often made locally and sold with only mild bargaining, but the stock repeats after a few streets.

Chefchaouen is much cheaper. Guesthouses and riads cost a fraction of European rates, meals are inexpensive and the town itself, the main attraction, is free to walk. Seville is reasonable for Western Europe, with tapas and drinks the clearest saving, but rooms rise steeply around Holy Week and the April Fair, and you pay to enter the Alcázar and the cathedral.

Seville is the home of flamenco, performed every night in tablaos, cultural centres and peñas, with opera at the Teatro de la Maestranza and drama at the Lope de Vega. Chefchaouen has no stage at all: Andalusian music appears at the occasional festival, and otherwise the call to prayer over the rooftops is all the music most visitors hear.

Chefchaouen is the more restful of the two. Mountain air, roof terraces and silent evenings set the pace, and the neighbourhood hammams give a genuine scrub, though polished spa treatments are few.

Seville has atmospheric Arab-style bath houses and hotel spas, and the slow afternoons and shady courtyards ease the day. Noisy streets at night and the festival crowds make it less of a place to recharge.