Dubrovnik or Matera?

Dubrovnik puts the sea on your doorstep. People swim off the rocks below the seaward walls, at Banje and in the Lapad coves, and short boat rides reach Lokrum, the Elafiti bays and Lopud's sandy cove. The catch is that the beaches are pebbles or concrete platforms, and they fill early in summer.

Matera has no shore of its own. Its beaches are the wide sands of Metaponto and Policoro on the Ionian coast. They are shallow and calm, and better for small children than Dubrovnik's rocks, but you need a car and most of a day, so swimming is an outing rather than part of daily life.

Neither city is a great food destination, and the difference is coast against hill country. Dubrovnik eats from the sea: black risotto, octopus, Ston oysters and Peljesac reds. The best of it is in the konobas of Lapad, Gruz or Konavle rather than on the Stradun.

Matera's cooking is built on bread, pulses and pasta: the horn-shaped durum loaf, crapiata, cavatelli and crackling dried peppers, with Aglianico to drink. Its own trap is the scenic cave restaurants of the Sassi. The fairer meals are up around Via Ridola.

Both are compact and extraordinary old towns that take two or three days to see, and they make a striking contrast. Dubrovnik's is built in stone and polished: a full circuit of walls, the marble Stradun, and palaces and monasteries rebuilt after the earthquake of 1667 and again after the siege of 1991-92.

Matera's Sassi are carved rather than built: cave homes and rock churches with Byzantine frescoes, climbing the Gravina gorge and lived in since prehistoric times. Dubrovnik's lanes are packed on summer days, while Matera looks its finest at dusk, when the lights come on across the ravine.

Dubrovnik offers more of a night out, though a modest one: sunset drinks at the bars cut into the rocks outside the walls, late wine and cocktail bars off the Stradun, and a club inside the Revelin fortress. All of it happens in summer and in the same few streets.

In Matera an evening means the passeggiata, a long dinner and a glass on a terrace above the lit Sassi, and there are no clubs at all. It suits couples, while Dubrovnik at least allows some dancing on a warm night.

Dubrovnik's outdoors is mountain meeting sea: kayaking round the walls to Lokrum, the climb up Mount Srd, and islands such as Mljet with its saltwater lakes and pine forest. The water adds a side that Matera cannot match.

Matera's landscape is drier and wilder. The Gravina gorge lies right below the Sassi and the stony Murgia plateau rises opposite, with abandoned rock churches and Neolithic sites along its trails. The Lucanian Dolomites and the Pollino forests lie further out. Both are best walked in spring and autumn.

Matera is the stronger base for excursions. It sits on the Puglia border, with a dense ring of places within about an hour: Altamura, Gravina, the trulli of Alberobello, the white towns of the Valle d'Itria, Castel del Monte and Polignano a Mare, plus Craco and the mountain villages of Basilicata. Nearly all of them need a car.

Dubrovnik has fewer outings, but they are more varied. Kotor and Perast in Montenegro and Trebinje in Bosnia lie across the borders, and Cavtat, Ston and the Elafiti islands are a boat ride or short drive away. Border queues in summer can take a big bite out of the day.

Dubrovnik is the easier of the two with children. Beach hotels in Lapad and Babin Kuk sit by calm coves, and the walls, the Lokrum boat, the cable car and the small aquarium make good days out. The hard part is the stairs and the summer crowds in the Old Town.

Matera has less to keep children busy. Older ones enjoy the caves and the underground cistern, but the stone steps of the Sassi rule out pushchairs, summer afternoons have little shade, and reaching the sea takes a car.

Both old towns are car-free and steep, so either way you get around on foot. Beyond its old town, Dubrovnik is better connected. City buses link Lapad, Gruz and Ploce to the Pile gate, and ferries and taxi boats run to the islands and Cavtat, so you can manage without a car.

Matera's upper town is flat and easy to walk, but the city is off the national rail network, with only a slow line to Bari and few buses. To reach most of what lies around it, you really need a hire car.

Dubrovnik sells the crafts of the Dalmatian coast, while Matera's are made of clay and stone. Between the souvenir shops of Dubrovnik's Old Town you can find Konavle embroidery and coral and filigree jewellery, and the morning market on Gunduliceva Poljana has candied orange peel and dried figs. Beyond that there is just a shopping centre in Gruz.

Matera's Sassi workshops sell cuccù whistles and miniature tufa carvings, and Via del Corso adds an ordinary Italian high street. The best things to take home are edible: dried peppers, local pasta and Aglianico.

Matera is much cheaper. Trattorias and guesthouses in the upper town cost little, and wandering the Sassi and the Murgia is free, though the cave hotels charge for their character.

Dubrovnik is expensive by any Mediterranean measure. In summer, Old Town rooms cost as much as in a major Western European capital, and the walls, the cable car and the boats add up. Staying in Lapad or Cavtat and coming in spring or autumn helps, but it never becomes cheap.

Dubrovnik has the edge thanks to its Summer Festival, held every July and August since 1950, with theatre, concerts and dance at Fort Lovrijenac and in the Rector's Palace atrium. The symphony orchestra plays through the year, but outside the festival there is little else.

Matera has concerts at the music conservatory, a summer jazz festival and the Festa della Bruna, whose procession ends with the papier-mâché float being torn apart. That makes one memorable night a year rather than a whole season.

Neither city has a bathing tradition, and in both the spas are found in hotels. Matera's are the more unusual, with pools cut into candlelit cave rooms, and the town's slow mornings and evenings over the gorge are restful in themselves.

In Dubrovnik the calm lies further out, on the Elafiti islands or in Cavtat, and in spring and autumn. A summer week in the Old Town is anything but relaxing.