Dresden or Nuremberg?

Neither city is a place for a beach trip, and both send swimmers to outdoor pools on hot days. The difference is in the escape. Dresden offers gravel-pit lakes on its edge and the ponds around Moritzburg, while the Elbe itself is off limits for swimming. Nuremberg's Franconian Lake District, about an hour south, has grassy shores and small sandy strips around the Brombachsee, which makes a fuller day out with children in July or August.

Nuremberg eats with more character. Its finger-sized bratwurst grilled over beechwood, the Sunday Schäufele and year-round Lebkuchen are a cuisine you can build a trip around, and the taverns and beer gardens pour lagers and smoky Kellerbier from Franconia's dense web of small breweries.

Dresden's Saxon cooking is hearty but plainer, and its best moments come at afternoon coffee, with Eierschecke and Stollen. It does have the edge for wine, with dry whites and sparkling wine from the Elbe valley around Radebeul and Meissen, and the Neustadt gives it more variety in international, casual places.

Dresden holds the greater treasures. The Zwinger's Old Masters, the Green Vault in the Residenzschloss and the Albertinum's Romantic painting put it among the great art cities of Central Europe, and the rebuilt Frauenkirche and Brühl's Terrace frame a baroque riverfront that easily fills three or four days.

Nuremberg's appeal is different: an almost complete ring of medieval walls, the Kaiserburg, Gothic St Sebaldus and St Lorenz, and Dürer's house. The Germanisches Nationalmuseum is its single great collection. It also has a sobering twentieth-century layer that Dresden doesn't, in the Rally Grounds and Courtroom 600. Both old towns are largely rebuilt after wartime bombing.

Dresden has the livelier nights, almost entirely thanks to the Äußere Neustadt north of the river. Its dense grid of student bars, beer kiosks and courtyard pubs stays busy late at weekends, and a few clubs sit in old industrial buildings. The old town across the Elbe goes quiet after dinner.

Nuremberg's evenings are calmer and more spread out: taverns and wine bars inside the walls, students on the squares and riverbanks on summer nights, and the small alternative bars of Gostenhof west of the walls. In both cities, going out is a good part of the trip rather than the reason to come.

Dresden has the more striking country on its doorstep. Saxon Switzerland's national park of sandstone towers and table mountains starts well under an hour away by suburban train, with the Malerweg for multi-day walking and a historic free-climbing scene. Closer in, the Elbe cycle route runs past vineyards and palaces, and the Ore Mountains add winter cross-country skiing.

Nuremberg's outdoors is gentler: the Reichswald pine forest at the edge of town, riverside cycling in the Pegnitz valley, and the limestone valleys and caves of Franconian Switzerland about an hour away. It suits easy walkers and cyclists rather than anyone after scenery with a sense of scale.

Both are excellent bases, though they point in different directions. Dresden's outings follow the Elbe: porcelain-making Meissen, Moritzburg's lake palace, the Königstein fortress, Görlitz on the Polish border, and Prague at the far edge of a long day.

Nuremberg's spread is a little wider and denser. Bamberg, Regensburg and Würzburg are each about an hour away, the walled Romantic Road towns of Rothenburg and Dinkelsbühl are slightly further, and Munich and Wagner's Bayreuth are easy by train. It suits travellers who want a different historic town every day.

Both cities are easy and unhurried with children. Nuremberg has more aimed squarely at them, thanks to its toy-making past: the Toy Museum, a railway museum with full-size locomotives, a zoo in old quarries with a dolphin house, and a branded play park just outside in Zirndorf.

Dresden answers with the miniature railway run by children in the Großer Garten, trams and trains in the Transport Museum, and the hands-on section of the Hygiene Museum. Paddle-steamer trips and the rocks of Saxon Switzerland make it the better choice for active older children.

Both are cities you mostly walk, and neither needs a car. Nuremberg is the more compact: almost everything sits within walls about 1.5km across, the station is at the southern gate, and U-Bahn lines, trams and S-Bahn trains run on one ticket out to Fürth and Erlangen. Dresden spreads along both banks of the Elbe, so trams carry more of the load, and paddle steamers add a slow, scenic way to reach Pillnitz.

Neither is a shopping destination, and both offer chain-store main streets. What differs is the souvenir. Dresden sells Meissen porcelain and Ore Mountain wooden figures, and its Neustadt has second-hand and design shops around the Kunsthofpassage. Nuremberg's Lebkuchen tins, tin figures and the craft workshops of the Handwerkerhof are its local buys. Each has one of Germany's oldest Christmas markets, the Striezelmarkt in Dresden and the Christkindlesmarkt in Nuremberg, and Advent is when both come alive.

Costs are much the same in both, moderate for Western Europe and below Germany's big southern and western cities. Dresden's catch is museum entry, which adds up across its many separate collections. Nuremberg's is hotels during its large trade fairs, the toy fair among them. In both, rooms climb in Advent, so an ordinary week outside the Christmas market season gives the best value.

Here Dresden is clearly ahead. The Semperoper is one of Europe's great opera houses, with the centuries-old Staatskapelle in the pit and Wagner and Strauss premieres in its history. Add the Dresden Philharmonic in the Kulturpalast and the Kreuzchor in the Kreuzkirche, and a music lover can plan a whole trip around the calendar.

Nuremberg's Staatstheater in its Art Nouveau opera house offers a respectable regional repertory. Its standout moments are outdoors in summer: the free folk and world music of the Bardentreffen, and the open-air orchestra concert in the Luitpoldhain.

Nuremberg makes a spa afternoon easier. A large thermal spa with sauna gardens is a short U-Bahn ride away in neighbouring Fürth, and the leisure pools on the edge of the city have sauna areas, where nude, mixed saunas are the norm. About an hour west, Bad Windsheim has saline pools you can float in.

Dresden's municipal baths keep up the same sauna habit, but its nearest thermal pool is at Bad Schandau, under an hour away. Its calm comes more from the city itself: the wide Elbe meadows, an old town that empties in the evening, and coffee and cake on a terrace above the river.