Cortina d'Ampezzo or Karlovy Vary?

Neither town is a swimming destination, and both lie far from the sea. What differs is the water you can find. Cortina's alpine lakes, such as Ghedina and Pianozes, are beautiful but fed by snowmelt and good for a brave dip at most. Karlovy Vary has Lake Medard, a flooded mine near Sokolov about half an hour away, plus outdoor pools warmed by its own springs.

Cortina eats better, helped by its wealthy visitors. Ampezzan cooking means casunziei with poppy seeds, polenta with game and barley soup. The best meals come on rifugio terraces high among the peaks, and in the valley there are wine bars pouring Veneto and South Tyrolean wines.

Karlovy Vary's food is plainer: roast pork, dumplings and svíčková with Pilsner-style beer, and only a handful of ambitious kitchens. Its pleasures are small and local: warm spa wafers from the colonnade stalls, Becherovka distilled in town, and cake by the Teplá. Neither has much street food.

Karlovy Vary is the better choice for sightseeing, because the town itself is the sight. Tiers of Belle Époque hotels climb the Teplá valley, and the spa quarter is UNESCO-listed among the Great Spa Towns of Europe. The colonnades and the Vřídlo geyser sit at its heart, with Dientzenhofer's baroque St Mary Magdalene and the gilded Orthodox church close by.

Cortina's centre is pleasant, with its basilica bell tower, painted houses and Olympic ice stadium, and the Rimoldi art collection fills a wet afternoon. Its most moving heritage is the First World War tunnels on Lagazuoi and the Cinque Torri, and reaching them takes a day in the mountains.

Both towns are quiet after dinner, so choose neither for nights out. Cortina has a slight edge in peak winter, when après-ski, the Corso Italia passeggiata and a club or two keep a glamorous crowd out late. Karlovy Vary is mostly asleep by eleven, with hotel bars, Czech pubs and casinos, and only livens up during its film festival week.

This is where the two differ most. Cortina sits inside a ring of pale Dolomite peaks, with lifts straight from town, and the Tre Cime and Lago di Misurina are under an hour away. A nature park begins at the valley's edge. It offers both top-class skiing and serious summer climbing, via ferrata and hut-to-hut trekking.

Karlovy Vary's outdoors are green and gentle: beech and spruce forest, graded spa paths up to the Diana tower, the moors of the Slavkov Forest and easy canoeing on the Ohře. Klínovec in the Ore Mountains has skiing, but nothing on the Dolomite scale.

Karlovy Vary has more worth seeing close by. Loket's castle in its river loop is twenty minutes away, and Mariánské Lázně and Františkovy Lázně complete the trio of West Bohemian spa towns. Bečov's reliquary of St Maurus and Plzeň are easy day trips, and even Prague can be done by coach.

From Cortina, most outings head into the mountains themselves. South Tyrol has San Candido, Brunico and Bolzano with its Iceman, and Venice is possible as a long coach day, but the nearby towns are charming rather than compelling.

Cortina works better for families who like being outdoors. It has ski schools for every age, beginner slopes at Socrepes and public skating at the Olympic stadium, and in summer there are lake walks, hut meadows and a forest rope park. Rainy days and high costs are the catch.

Karlovy Vary is built for adults taking cures. Children enjoy the geyser, sipping spring water from spouted cups and riding the funicular to the Diana lookout, but these fill a day or two at most, and the steep streets are hard work with a pushchair.

Karlovy Vary is easier to reach and easier to manage without a car. The spa quarter is a walkable strip along the river, and buses and the funicular handle the slopes. Regional trains run to Loket, Cheb and Mariánské Lázně, and coaches go to Prague.

Cortina's compact centre is easy on foot, and ski buses link the slopes in winter, but the town has had no railway since 1964. You arrive by coach from Venice or after a long drive, buses up to the passes are sparse, and most visitors end up hiring a car.

Both towns shop in the same way, along one polished promenade aimed at wealthy guests. On Cortina's Corso Italia that means luxury fashion, furriers and upmarket mountain wear, with wood carving and filigree for something made in the valley. Its anchor is the Cooperativa, founded in 1893, which sells everything from local food to outdoor gear.

In Karlovy Vary, Stará louka and Tržiště have their own jewellers and fur shops, but the things worth carrying home are Bohemian. Look for Moser crystal from its own showroom, porcelain from the factories around town, garnet jewellery and bottles of Becherovka.

Of the two, Karlovy Vary is much the cheaper. In Cortina, rooms and restaurant meals cost luxury-resort rates in the winter peak and in August, and a ski trip adds lift passes and equipment hire on top. The rifugi give better value than their setting suggests, and early summer and late September are gentler on the bill, but Cortina stays a costly place to stay at any time of year.

Karlovy Vary is a moderately priced resort. It is dearer than ordinary Czech towns but nowhere near Cortina's level. The grand spa hotels and colonnade restaurants charge for the view, so what you pay depends mostly on where you eat and when you go. Rooms are cheapest outside the summer season, and the film festival week is the dearest time to book.

Karlovy Vary gives you far more to go out to in the evening. Cortina has no theatre season and no regular venue. Its live music comes mainly in summer, when chamber and classical festivals bring concerts to churches and halls and sometimes out into the mountains. Apart from a few concerts around Christmas and New Year, evenings there offer little.

Karlovy Vary's symphony orchestra grew out of the spa bands that played to guests for centuries. In summer some of its light classical programmes move outdoors onto the colonnades. The ornate Fellner and Helmer theatre hosts touring drama, operetta and concerts, and an autumn Dvořák festival adds a few highlights.

Wellness is the reason Karlovy Vary exists. Thirteen springs feed the colonnades for a drinking cure prescribed here for centuries. Spa hotels and sanatoria offer carbonated baths, peat wraps, massages and doctors' consultations, and some have pools of warm spring water.

Cortina has no springs and no bathing tradition, so relaxing there means a hotel spa with sauna, hay bath and pool after the slopes, or a slow afternoon on a hut terrace. That calm depends on the season and is hard to find in the peak weeks.