Florence or Geneva?

Neither city has a beach of its own, but Geneva gets you into the water far more easily. In summer you can dive off the Bains des Pâquis jetty with the Jet d'Eau in view, or spread out on the lawns and pebbles of Genève-Plage, all without leaving town. The season is short and the shore is lido rather than sand.

From Florence, the sea means a day out to the sandy Versilia beaches around Viareggio, about an hour and a half by train. Otherwise a hot afternoon means a hotel or public pool. If you want sand and the sea, Florence is better treated as one stop on a trip that also includes the coast.

Florence has the stronger and more everyday food culture. You can eat lampredotto rolls from street carts, browse the produce at the Mercato Centrale and Sant'Ambrogio, and find honest bistecca and ribollita in Oltrarno trattorie, with Chianti vineyards starting just south of town. You need to avoid the set tourist menus around the Duomo, but good meals are easy to find.

Geneva cooks French food with a Swiss accent: lake perch, fondue and raclette in panelled brasseries, and local Chasselas to drink. It has polished fine dining in Carouge and the Old Town and a wide range of international kitchens, but almost no cheap casual eating. Meals here are refined but expensive, where Florence feeds you well at any price.

This is where the two cities differ most. Florence holds one of the world's great concentrations of art: Brunelleschi's dome, Botticelli and Leonardo in the Uffizi, Michelangelo's David and the Bargello's sculpture, then the Pitti Palace, the Medici Chapels and the Brancacci Chapel. A week is not too long, and the big museums need booking.

Geneva's sights tell a different story, of Calvin's Reformation at St Pierre Cathedral and of the city's world role at the Palais des Nations and the Red Cross museum. CERN adds a scientific angle Florence can't match. It is a rewarding set, but it fills two or three days rather than a week.

Both cities go to bed early, but in different ways. Florence's evenings revolve around aperitivo and wine bars, with crowds holding drinks out on Piazza Santo Spirito, a more local scene at Sant'Ambrogio, and loud student pubs near the centre. In summer, bars open along the Arno.

Geneva is quieter on weeknights, but the Pâquis keeps its bars busy late. The alternative centres of Plainpalais and Jonction also run club nights and a small electronic scene, which Florence largely lacks. Choose Florence for lingering over a glass in a square, and Geneva if you want a dance floor now and then.

Geneva is the stronger base for the outdoors. The Salève rises just over the French border, with a cable car, cliffs and paragliding, and the Jura offers forest hikes and cross-country skiing. On clear days Mont Blanc closes the view down the lake, and Chamonix and the ski resorts are close enough for a day.

Florence's countryside is gentler and shaped by people. You can walk the olive terraces up at Fiesole, cycle the cypress-lined lanes of Chianti, or go further to the beech forests of the Casentino and the marble peaks of the Apuan Alps. It is lovely country to walk through, though not wild, and summer heat cuts long walks short.

Florence has an unusual number of famous towns within easy reach. Siena and Pisa are each roughly an hour away, walled Lucca a little more, and Bologna is under forty minutes by fast train. San Gimignano, Volterra and the Chianti villages are easy by car. You could spend a week on day trips without repeating one.

Geneva has fewer outings, but they are spread across two countries. Lake steamers call at Nyon, Lausanne and Montreux with the Château de Chillon, passing the Lavaux vineyard terraces. Medieval Yvoire and canal-lined Annecy are on the French side, and Gruyères and Bern each make a longer day out.

Geneva is the easier city with children. The streets are safe and mostly flat, trams take pushchairs without fuss, and the Natural History Museum's big animal dioramas can hold young children for hours. Add the lakeside playgrounds and rides on the little yellow harbour boats, and the first few days go smoothly.

Florence takes more effort. Children enjoy climbing the dome, the secret passages of Palazzo Vecchio, the globes at the Museo Galileo and a run around the Boboli, but the main sights are made for adults. Narrow pavements and summer heat make it harder still. Neither city has a zoo or theme park, so families fill the gap with the Pinocchio park at Collodi from Florence, or a mountain day from Geneva.

Geneva has the more complete transport system, though in either city you will cover the centre mostly on foot. In Florence the Duomo, the Uffizi and the Pitti are all within about twenty minutes' walk of each other, so you hardly need transport. There is no metro, though, and the stone paving and crowded pavements tire you out. A car is a burden inside the restricted historic centre and only earns its keep in the hill towns.

Geneva runs its trams, buses and yellow harbour boats as one punctual network. The airport is a few minutes from the main station by train, regional rail reaches the French suburbs and the rest of Switzerland, and you can get to the mountains without a car.

Florence sells craft, and Geneva sells watches and jewellery. In Florence there is leather on market stalls and in workshops, marbled paper and bound notebooks, goldsmiths on the Ponte Vecchio, and gilders and restorers still at work in the Oltrarno, with the big fashion houses on Via de' Tornabuoni. Look closely at the leather, because not all of it is made by hand.

In Geneva, the flagship boutiques of the Swiss watch houses line the Rue du Rhône, and the chocolatiers are good for cheaper gifts. Carouge's design workshops and the Plainpalais flea market add character. Beyond these specialities, neither city has much more than ordinary high-street shops, and many Genevans cross into France to shop.

Florence costs a lot for a city its size, but Geneva is in another league altogether. In Florence, central hotels and museum tickets eat into a budget. Street food, market lunches, cheap house wine and a centre you can walk let you claw much of it back, especially if you stay across the river or come in winter.

In Geneva, even a simple meal or a glass of wine costs far more than almost anywhere in Europe, and hotel rates climb further during conferences. Free city museums, free transport for hotel guests and cheap lake lidos help a little. Many careful spenders still sleep or eat across the border in France.

The two are evenly matched, and both lean classical. Florence has the deeper history: opera was more or less born here, and the Maggio Musicale is one of Europe's oldest festivals. The Teatro della Pergola is a beautiful old house, but much of what visitors actually hear is short church concerts put on for tourists.

Geneva hears the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Victoria Hall, famed for its acoustics, and sees opera and ballet at the Grand Théâtre. Its live scene also reaches further, with concerts and dance at the Bâtiment des Forces Motrices in the Rhône and small jazz and rock venues. Florence has little of that kind outside the classical season.

Geneva is more restful in itself. In winter, the Bains des Pâquis turns into a sauna and hammam where regulars plunge into the cold lake. The lakefront hotels have serious spas, Sundays are very quiet, and Évian and Divonne are close across the border.

Florence's crowded centre is rarely calm in season, and the city has little bathing culture beyond hotel spas. The relaxation lies outside the city: the old spa halls of Montecatini Terme are under an hour by train, the open-air sulphur pools at Saturnia and Bagno Vignoni are further south, and a few slow nights on a farm stay in the hills are the Tuscan way to unwind.