Cortina d'Ampezzo or Matera?

Neither is a beach town, but only Matera has real sand within reach. The Ionian shore at Metaponto and Policoro is about 45 minutes away by car, with wide beaches backed by pine woods and shallow, warm water that suits children. Puglia's rocky Adriatic coves are a longer drive.

Cortina's water is alpine. Lakes such as Ghedina and Pianozes are lovely to walk round but stay cold even in July, and the Adriatic is more than two hours away. Swimming there mostly means a hotel pool.

Both eat well for small towns, but they draw on very different traditions. Cortina's Ampezzan cooking is mountain food with a Venetian edge: beetroot casunziei, polenta with game, barley soup. Its best meals come on rifugio terraces high among the peaks, and there are a few ambitious kitchens and Veneto and South Tyrolean wines in the valley.

Matera's food is southern peasant cooking built around its horn-shaped durum-wheat bread, with pulses, hand-made cavatelli, lamb and crackling dried peppers, washed down with Aglianico. You eat in cave dining rooms and upper-town trattorias rather than with mountain views. Neither town offers much street food or anything beyond its own region.

Here Matera is in another league. The Sassi themselves are the main sight: cave houses lived in since prehistoric times, rock churches with Byzantine frescoes, the Romanesque cathedral on the Civita and, under the main piazza, the Palombaro Lungo cistern you can walk through. Carlo Levi's panorama at Palazzo Lanfranchi and MUSMA's sculpture in rock rooms complete the picture.

Cortina's centre is pleasant, with its tall bell tower and painted houses, and the Rimoldi collection of twentieth-century Italian art is worth a rainy hour. Its most striking history, the First World War tunnels on Lagazuoi and the Cinque Torri, takes a day in the mountains to reach.

Neither town is a place for a big night out, and in both the evening follows the Italian pattern of a passeggiata and then a long dinner. What differs is the season and the style. Cortina has après-ski as the lifts close and, in the peak winter weeks, a few smart bars and a club or two for a glamorous crowd. Matera's late drinks are in cave wine bars and on terraces above the lit-up Sassi, and it is liveliest in summer, with a small student crowd.

Cortina sits inside one of the world's great mountain landscapes. Lifts climb straight from the town into the ring of Dolomite peaks, and the Tre Cime and Lago di Misurina are under an hour away. The year divides between skiing in winter and hiking, climbing, via ferrata and mountain biking in summer.

Matera's nature is smaller and wilder: the Gravina gorge below the Sassi and the stony Murgia plateau on the far side, with abandoned rock churches and Neolithic village sites along the trails. The Lucanian Dolomites and the Pollino forests make good days out, but the bare plateau is too hot for walking in high summer.

Matera is the better base for exploring. Within about an hour you can reach the trulli of Alberobello, the white towns of the Valle d'Itria, Castel del Monte, the old town of Bari and the sea cliffs of Polignano a Mare. Basilicata adds the abandoned town of Craco and the Greek temple of Hera at Metaponto. You need a car for nearly all of it.

From Cortina, most outings head back into the mountains. The best towns are in South Tyrol, such as Brunico with its castle and Bolzano with the Iceman. Venice is possible as a long coach day, but the places within range are pleasant rather than essential.

Cortina is the easier choice for families, as long as they ski or walk. Ski schools for every age, beginner slopes at Socrepes, public skating at the Olympic ice stadium and summer trails to huts with meadows give children plenty to do. Wet days drag, though, and costs mount quickly.

Matera has nothing designed for children, and its steep stone stairways make a pushchair useless. Older children love the caves and the cistern, and the shallow Ionian beaches are a short drive away, but the town works best as a brief stop.

Both have small centres you can walk, and both are awkward to reach without a car. Cortina's centre is flat and compact, and in winter ski buses and lifts do much of the work. There has been no railway since 1964, though, and summer buses up to the passes are limited.

Matera's upper town is flat too, but the Sassi below are all steep stairways, and cars cannot enter most of the old districts. The town's only rail link is a slow narrow-gauge line to Bari.

Cortina has the more serious shopping, all of it on the Corso Italia: luxury fashion, jewellers, furriers and upmarket mountain wear. The multi-storey Cooperativa, founded in 1893, anchors the street, and there is local wood carving and filigree to buy.

Matera's shopping is mostly souvenirs and food. Cuccù whistles, tufa carvings and ceramics fill the workshops in the Sassi, and Via del Corso has ordinary Italian high-street shops. The best things to take home are dried peppers, local pasta and Aglianico.

The gap here is wide, and Cortina is the one that stretches the budget. Rooms and dinners in town cost luxury-resort rates, and they climb highest twice a year, in the winter peak and in August. Early summer and late September are the gentler times to book, and lunch at a rifugio costs less than the view would suggest.

Matera sits well below that, and eating out there costs less than in Italy's big cities. Its premium comes from the cave hotels in the Sassi, the town's speciality, and its only real price peak falls in the busiest summer weeks. Most sights charge little, so once the room is paid for, the days themselves cost little.

Live performance is thin in both towns, and neither has a theatre season or a regular venue. Matera has slightly more: concerts by its music conservatory, a summer jazz festival with the Sassi as a backdrop, and the Festa della Bruna, when a papier-mâché float is paraded and then torn apart. Cortina's live music comes mainly from summer chamber and classical festivals in churches, halls and sometimes mountain settings.

Cortina has the stronger spa culture, even without thermal springs. Many hotels have Alpine-style saunas, steam rooms, hay baths and indoor pools, which are welcome after skiing or a long hike. The clear air of June and September adds to the calm, though the peak weeks bring traffic and crowds.

Matera has fewer hotel spas, but some are unusual, with candlelit pools cut into the rock. The town's calm comes more from its pace: quiet mornings in the Sassi and evenings watching the light fade over the gorge, best from autumn to spring.