Essaouira or Fes?

Essaouira has a real beach, a wide arc of pale sand that starts at the medina walls, with wilder Sidi Kaouki further south. The cool Atlantic and the wind make it better for walks, horse rides and kites than for sunbathing, and calm mornings or the corner by the port are best for a swim.

Fes has no beach within reach of a normal stay. Swimming there means a hotel pool or a riad plunge pool, which is worth booking for the summer heat.

Essaouira's great pleasure is narrow but memorable: you choose sardines, sea bream or spider crab at the harbour grills and they are cooked in front of you, with fish tagines and Friday couscous in the town. Beyond the port, the choice soon runs out.

Fes has the richer kitchen, built on the refined, Andalusian-influenced Fassi tradition of pastilla, quince and preserved-lemon tagines and long multi-course riad dinners. Its medina street food adds bissara at breakfast, sfenj and grilled skewers. Alcohol is scarce in both, and in Fes it is largely confined to hotels and the Ville Nouvelle.

Essaouira's medina is lovely to wander: an 18th-century fortified grid of white houses with blue shutters, framed by the cannon-lined Skala ramparts and the old mellah. It is atmospheric, but most visitors have seen it in a day or two.

Fes el-Bali works on another scale. It is a medieval city of thousands of lanes holding the Bou Inania and Al-Attarine madrasas, the Quaraouiyine, the Chouara tannery and the Nejjarine fountain, with the Royal Palace gates and the Marinid tombs beyond. For anyone travelling mainly for history and architecture, Fes can fill several days where Essaouira fills a weekend.

Neither town suits a night out. Essaouira's evenings run to sunset drinks on rooftop terraces and a couple of beach bars where surfers stay late. In Fes the night is a long riad dinner in the medina, and the few hotel bars and lounges are out in the Ville Nouvelle.

Both offer good time outdoors, but of very different kinds. Essaouira's is coastal: kitesurfing and windsurfing on a windy bay, horse and camel rides towards the Diabat dunes, argan forest with tree-climbing goats inland, and Eleonora's falcons on the offshore islands in summer.

Fes looks to the mountains. There are Middle Atlas cedar forests around Azrou with wild Barbary macaques, lake-dotted limestone plateaux and the caves of Tazekka National Park. All of them need a car and are best visited outside the summer heat.

Essaouira is fairly isolated, and its outings are small: the surf village of Sidi Kaouki, the thuya woodcarvers of Ghazoua, argan cooperatives and Safi's pottery quarter two hours up the coast. Marrakech is too far for a comfortable return trip.

Fes is a far better base. Meknes is a short train ride away, and with a driver it combines with the Roman mosaics of Volubilis and the holy town of Moulay Idriss in one long day. Ifrane and the small medinas of Sefrou and Bhalil lie to the south.

Essaouira is much the easier with children. The medina is small, flat and mostly car-free, the beach is minutes away, and the camels, horses and fishing boats hold their attention. The cool sea and summer wind do limit beach days.

Fes is hard work with small ones, with steep, crowded lanes, loaded donkeys, persistent touts and fierce summer afternoons. Older children who enjoy getting lost and watching craftsmen can love it, ideally from a base with a pool.

In Essaouira the medina, the port and the beach promenade are all a short, flat walk apart, and small blue taxis cover the rest of the town. Fes's medina is car-free too, but its lanes climb, twist and dead-end, so many visitors hire a guide for the first day and use red petit taxis to reach the Ville Nouvelle and the station.

For trips out of town the balance shifts slightly. Fes has a train to Meknes, while Essaouira beyond its edge depends on coaches, grand taxis or a hired driver.

Fes is the stronger craft city, because much of its work is made in the same lanes where it is sold: tannery leather, Seffarine copper and brass, blue-and-white Fassi pottery, zellige and carved cedar. Bargaining and guides who steer you towards shops paying them commission take some managing.

Essaouira's souk is smaller and noticeably calmer, with less pressure from sellers. Its speciality is fragrant thuya wood, alongside argan cosmetics and silver, and its small galleries of naive and gnawa-inspired painting are a find of their own.

Both are inexpensive for European visitors, and Fes is slightly easier on the wallet, with very cheap madrasa and museum entries and modest medina riads that offer real character. In Essaouira, popularity with foreign visitors pushes up prices at the smarter riads and rooftop restaurants, though grilled fish at the port and the free ramparts keep a simple stay cheap.

Each town has its own musical tradition and one major annual festival, with little regular programme in between. Essaouira is the home of gnawa, the trance music of the Afro-Moroccan brotherhoods, which fills the squares and ramparts during the Gnaoua World Music Festival.

Fes leans towards Andalusian classical and Sufi devotional music, heard at its Festival of World Sacred Music in palace gardens and at old gates. Outside festival time, both offer only informal sessions or music at riad dinners.

Rest takes a different form in each town. In Essaouira the calm comes from the place itself: traffic-free lanes, sea air, long breakfasts on roof terraces and surf-and-yoga stays along the coast, although the wind can make lounging outdoors less restful.

Fes is intense by day but takes bathing more seriously. Every medina quarter has a public hammam, and the centuries-old hot springs of Moulay Yacoub are half an hour away. Quiet comes in a riad courtyard once the lanes empty.