Florence or Lucca?

Lucca is the one for a swim. The Versilia sand at Viareggio is about 25 minutes by train, so it is easy to spend the morning in town and the afternoon at a beach club or on the pine-backed dunes of the Lecciona.

From Florence the same coast is about an hour and a half each way, which makes the sea a full day's outing. Most visitors there cool off in a hotel or public pool instead.

Florence eats with more range. It has bistecca, ribollita and lampredotto from street carts, two working markets at San Lorenzo and Sant'Ambrogio, Chianti reds from just outside the city and a fine-dining tier for a special night. The catch is the set menus around the Duomo, so the better meals are in the trattorie of the Oltrarno.

Lucca's cooking is more rustic and more local. It is built on Garfagnana spelt, tordelli, chestnut flour, cecina and buccellato, and it is reliable and fairly priced. On a longer stay, though, its menus start to repeat in a way Florence's do not.

Florence holds the Renaissance at full strength: the Uffizi, David at the Accademia, the Bargello's sculpture and the Pitti. Smaller treasures such as the San Marco frescoes and the Brancacci Chapel add more, and you could fill a week as long as you book ahead and accept summer queues.

In Lucca the appeal is the whole townscape rather than the collections. The intact, tree-lined walls, the carved façades of San Michele and San Frediano, the oval Piazza dell'Anfiteatro and the Torre Guinigi are the highlights. Its museums are modest, and two unhurried days cover it.

Neither is a city for clubbing, but Florence stays up later. Piazza Santo Spirito fills with people drinking outside on warm nights, Sant'Ambrogio draws locals, student pubs cluster near the centre, and in summer bars open along the Arno.

Lucca's evening is an aperitivo in Piazza San Michele, a long dinner and a walk on the walls, and the centre is quiet by midnight. Anyone who wants to dance has to go to the Versilia clubs and arrange a late ride back.

Lucca has the wilder country within reach. The Apuan Alps, with their limestone peaks and marble quarries, rise about an hour to the north. The Garfagnana and the Orecchiella park have chestnut and beech woods, and Lake Massaciuccoli and San Rossore suit birdwatchers. Closer in, the 4km ring of the walls is where the town runs and cycles.

Florence's outdoors is gentler and more cultivated: olive terraces at Fiesole, the view from San Miniato and Chianti lanes for walking and cycling. The Casentino forests are further out.

Both are excellent bases, and Florence has a slight edge in reach. Siena, Pisa, Lucca itself, San Gimignano, the Chianti villages and the Val d'Orcia are all within range, and Bologna is under forty minutes by fast train. That gives you a week of different places.

Lucca's options lean west and north instead. Pisa is half an hour away, and there are the villas of Marlia and Torrigiani, Collodi, Pietrasanta, Carrara and the Garfagnana villages, with Florence just over an hour off. The southern hill towns are much further from it, and San Gimignano or the Cinque Terre need an early start.

Lucca is the easier city with children. It is small, flat and mostly car-free, and riding the walls on bikes or a family quadricycle is the classic outing. Collodi's Pinocchio park is about 20 minutes away and the beaches are under half an hour, and Lucca Comics & Games in autumn delights older children and teenagers.

Florence can work if you choose hands-on outings: the dome climb, the secret passages of Palazzo Vecchio, the Museo Galileo and the Boboli. Still, narrow pavements, summer crowds and the July heat make it harder going.

You walk in both, and in both a car is a burden in the centre. Florence's main sights lie within a twenty-minute walk on crowded stone pavements, with trams to the airport and small buses up to Fiesole. Lucca, flat and traffic-free inside its walls, is easiest on a rented bike, but its buses to the countryside are sparse, so a car helps more there.

Florence is much the stronger for shopping. It has leather from the San Lorenzo stalls to proper workshops, marbled paper, goldsmiths on the Ponte Vecchio, Oltrarno gilders and framers, and the fashion houses of Via de' Tornabuoni. Lucca has the old Liberty-style shopfronts of Via Fillungo, good delicatessens and a monthly antiques market worth planning a visit around, but nothing like Florence's luxury or craft depth.

Neither city is cheap, but Lucca is gentler on the budget. The walls and many churches are free, the paid sights are modest, and the main expense is a room, which is often better value just outside the walls.

Florence costs more in the ways a visitor feels most: central hotels from spring to autumn, entry fees at the Uffizi, the Accademia and the dome, and restaurants near the sights. Street food, market lunches and a bed across the river or near the station keep costs in check.

Both have a real opera heritage and little live music beyond it, so the difference is in character. Florence, where opera was born around 1600, has the Teatro del Maggio with its own orchestra and the Maggio Musicale festival every spring.

Lucca's music belongs to Puccini. Recitals of his arias are held in a central church for most of the year, the Teatro del Giglio has a season, and summer brings open-air opera by the lake at Torre del Lago and the big Lucca Summer Festival concerts in Piazza Napoleone.

Lucca is the more restful of the two, mostly because of its pace: quiet streets with no traffic, long lunches and an evening walk on the shaded walls. It is also closer to the baths. Montecatini is about half an hour by train, and there are cave pools at Monsummano and steam grottoes at Bagni di Lucca.

Florence in high season is crowded, and you find calm only in pockets such as the Boboli and Bardini gardens. The sulphur pools of Bagno Vignoni and Saturnia need a longer day out.