French Riviera or Sardinia?

Both have fine summer swimming, but Sardinia has more good beaches and better ones. The Riviera splits between pebbles at Nice and Menton and sand at Cannes, Juan-les-Pins and Pampelonne, and much of that sand is taken up by private concessions. Its most beautiful water is in the Esterel coves and the bays of Cap Ferrat.

Sardinia goes further on almost every coast. There are granite coves with turquoise water in the northeast, white pebble bays below the Orosei cliffs reached by boat, and shallow sand at Chia, Tuerredda and La Pelosa. It also has Poetto as a long town beach for Cagliari.

The Riviera eats better. Nice has a cuisine of its own, with socca, pissaladière and stuffed vegetables, and the Cours Saleya market is the place to see it. Between Menton and Cannes there are also many serious restaurants. Its weak point is the tourist menus on the seafront.

Sardinian food is equally distinctive, but it comes from shepherds rather than the sea: suckling pig, pane carasau, culurgiones and pecorino, with Cannonau to drink. The best of it comes in long farm-stay dinners in the hills. Outside Cagliari there is little fine dining or choice of cuisines.

These are very different kinds of heritage, and the Riviera's is both deeper and easier to reach. Its strength is twentieth-century art made on the spot. The Matisse chapel in Vence, the Picasso collection in the Grimaldi castle and the Fondation Maeght sit among baroque Nice, Belle Epoque hotels and Monaco's palace.

Sardinia goes back much further. It has Bronze Age nuraghi such as Su Nuraxi, giants' tombs, the Mont'e Prama statues in Cagliari's museum, and Phoenician Nora and Tharros on the shore. All of it is fascinating, but you have to drive between sites rather than walk from one to the next.

The Riviera has far more to offer at night, and more of it lasts beyond August. Saint-Tropez and Monaco have glamorous beach clubs, and Juan-les-Pins has a compact strip that runs into the small hours. Nice's old town and port keep pubs and wine bars busy all year, helped by the city's students.

Sardinia has one comparable scene, around Porto Cervo, and it is dressy and fades by September. Cagliari's Marina and Alghero's ramparts are good for a drink, but in most of the island's towns an evening means dinner and a stroll.

Both are excellent for the outdoors, but they feel different. On the Riviera, nature sits right beside the towns. You can walk the cape paths past villa gardens, kayak below the red rock of the Esterel, and reach the high trails of the Mercantour, with skiing in winter, in about one and a half hours from Nice.

Sardinia is wilder and harder going. It has the Supramonte cliffs, the Gorropu canyon and the demanding Selvaggio Blu trek, with cork oak forests, mouflon and wild horses inland. On the water, the Maddalena marine park is good for sailing and diving, and Porto Pollo is a kitesurfing spot.

The Riviera is much better for day trips. Villefranche, Monaco and Menton are each well under an hour by train from Nice, and you can visit the perched villages, the perfume houses of Grasse, the Lérins islands and the Italian border towns. The one thing missing is a single great excursion, so many days end up being another pretty village.

Sardinia's outings are fewer and depend on where you stay, because the drives are long. The ferry from Santa Teresa Gallura to Bonifacio in Corsica is the standout. Alghero and Bosa, Carloforte and the Barbagia villages each make good days, but only from the right base.

Sardinia is the easier choice with children. Chia, the Costa Rei and La Pelosa have shallow, sandy water, and many resort villages have pools and children's clubs. The days revolve around the beach, and the cliff coves on the east coast are better avoided with small children.

The Riviera has more attractions made for children, including the Monaco aquarium and Parc Phoenix in Nice. But family rooms are expensive, the pebbles of Nice are hard on small feet, and the stepped hill villages defeat pushchairs. Families do best on the sand at Juan-les-Pins or Cannes.

This is one of the widest gaps between the two. On the Riviera, the shore railway between Cannes and Menton, the tram from the airport and compact old towns make a stay without a car entirely workable. Only the hill villages and Saint-Tropez are awkward to reach.

In Sardinia, a hire car is effectively required. Winding roads take longer than the map suggests, the trains are slow, and buses rarely reach the beaches. Flying into the nearest of the island's three airports and choosing your base carefully saves a lot of driving.

It comes down to resort luxury against island crafts, and the Riviera offers both. It has boutiques on the Croisette in Cannes and around the Monte-Carlo casino, and department stores on Avenue Jean-Médecin in Nice. Its crafts have deep roots too: perfume in Grasse, bubbled glass in Biot, pottery in Vallauris and the Monday antiques market on the Cours Saleya.

In Sardinia, you shop for things to take home rather than spending a day in the shops. Look for red coral in Alghero, Pattada shepherd's knives, filigree gold, woven rugs, bottarga and myrtle liqueur. Porto Cervo's boutiques open only for the summer, and beyond Cagliari's main streets the choice is narrow.

Neither is cheap in high summer, but Sardinia costs less overall. Its expensive stretch is concentrated on the Costa Smeralda. Around Cagliari, Alghero, Ogliastra and the inland villages, prices are moderate, though car hire and ferries add to the cost in August.

The Riviera is expensive almost everywhere from Saint-Tropez to Monaco, and Nice is the only sensible base on a budget. Its one advantage is that the cheap trains and buses mean you can manage without a car.

A winter evening on the Riviera can mean opera or ballet in the small gilded theatre inside Monte-Carlo's casino building, where the Ballets de Monte-Carlo and the Philharmonic perform through the season. Nice adds an opera house in its old town and a symphony orchestra. In summer the music moves outdoors, to jazz in the pine grove at Juan-les-Pins and on Place Masséna, although between the seasons there are few small venues to drop into.

Sardinia gives you far less to book, but what you hear is unlike anything on the mainland. Canto a tenore, the deep four-voice shepherd singing of Barbagia, and the ancient triple pipes called launeddas turn up at village festivals, and Cagliari's Sant'Efisio procession is a great spectacle of costume and music. The Teatro Lirico in Cagliari has an opera and concert season and Berchidda holds Time in Jazz in summer, but elsewhere on the island there is little to attend for most of the year.

Both are about equal for rest, and both are calmest in late spring and September. The Riviera offers polished seawater therapy, at thalassotherapy centres in Monaco and large spas set in the gardens of grand hotels on Cap Ferrat and Cap d'Antibes.

Sardinia is restful more for its slow pace than for its treatments. You can bathe in warm Roman springs at Fordongianus, stay in a thermal hotel at Sardara, or spend unhurried days at an inland farm stay or in quiet Ogliastra.