Granada or Matera?

Neither city is on the sea, and both make the beach a separate outing. What differs is the kind of beach. From Granada, the Costa Tropical is about an hour south over the mountains and can be reached by bus. The beaches there are coves of pebble and dark sand, and the clear water around La Herradura is good for snorkelling.

From Matera, the Ionian coast is closer in time, but you need a car. The beaches around Metaponto and Policoro are long and sandy, backed by pine woods, with shallow water that young children will find easier than Granada's pebbles.

Granada eats better and more sociably. The custom of a free plate with every drink turns an evening into a tapas round between bars, with Alpujarras ham, aubergine with cane honey and remojón along the way. The Moroccan tea houses of Calderería Nueva and the San Agustín market add variety.

Matera's cooking is honest Basilicata peasant food: crusty pane di Matera, crapiata, cavatelli and crackling peperoni cruschi. It is often served in cave rooms in the Sassi. It is satisfying, but there is no street food or market life, and both cities have little to offer beyond their own regional cooking.

Granada has the greater set of sights. The Nasrid palaces and Generalife gardens of the Alhambra face the Moorish lanes of the Albaicín. Below them, the cathedral, the Royal Chapel and the Carthusian monastery are enough for several unhurried days.

Matera's heritage is smaller but stranger. Its sights are cave dwellings stacked up the Gravina gorge, rock churches such as Santa Maria de Idris with faded Byzantine frescoes, and the vast Palombaro Lungo cistern under the main square. Most visitors see it in a day or two, and it is best at dusk.

This is where the two cities differ most. Granada's university fills the bars of Calle Elvira and the clubs around Pedro Antonio de Alarcón well past midnight at weekends, though the city quietens in summer when the students leave.

Matera offers the passeggiata along Via del Corso, a long dinner and a drink on a terrace above the lit-up Sassi. There are no clubs, and outside summer the town goes quiet soon after dinner.

Granada has real mountains on its doorstep. The Sierra Nevada's ski slopes are about 45 minutes away, summer trails lead towards mainland Spain's highest summit, and the Alpujarras have terraced valleys and chestnut woods.

Matera's best walk starts right in town: down into the Gravina gorge and up across the Murgia plateau, past abandoned rock churches and Neolithic sites, to the classic view back at the Sassi. The Lucanian Dolomites and the Pollino forests need a long drive.

Both cities make excellent bases, but they work differently. From Granada, the big outings run by train, with Córdoba's Mezquita and Málaga each about an hour or so away. By bus or car you can also reach Antequera's dolmens and the Renaissance towns of Úbeda and Baeza.

From Matera, the rewards are a string of smaller places just over the border in Puglia: the trulli of Alberobello, the white towns of the Valle d'Itria, Castel del Monte and Polignano a Mare on its cliffs. Nearly all of them need a car.

Granada is the easier city with children. The Parque de las Ciencias, with its planetarium and butterfly house, fills most of a day, the Alhambra's fountains keep younger ones interested, and a snow day in the Sierra Nevada is easy to add in winter.

Matera has nothing aimed at children. Older ones may love the caves and the underground cistern, but the Sassi's stone steps defeat a pushchair. Both old towns are steep, so the difference lies in what there is for children to do.

Granada is easier to get around. Small red minibuses climb to the Alhambra, the Albaicín and Sacromonte, the lower town is flat, and trains link it to Córdoba and Málaga.

Matera is fine on foot once you are there, though the stairways into the Sassi are tiring. Beyond the town, it is off the national rail network, and the slow narrow-gauge line to Bari and the sparse buses make a hire car close to essential.

Neither city is a shopping destination, but Granada gives you more to browse. The Alcaicería, the old Moorish silk market, sells mainly souvenirs, and the real finds are taracea inlaid woodwork, blue and green Fajalauza pottery, and guitars from the city's workshops. Calle Recogidas adds the Spanish chains and a department store.

Matera's shopping is small and aimed at visitors: painted cuccù whistles and tufa carvings, plus dried peppers and local pasta to take home.

Granada goes a little further for the money. The free tapa with each drink keeps eating out cheap, local buses cost little, and rooms in the lower town and the Realejo are good value. The expense gathers around the Alhambra, in terrace restaurants with palace views and boutique stays in the Albaicín.

Matera's simple trattorias are cheaper than in the big Italian cities, and walking the Sassi and the Murgia costs nothing. Its cave hotels are the town's speciality and are priced to match. Staying in the upper town is the way to save.

Granada has a real performing culture. Zambra flamenco is danced in the Sacromonte caves, and rawer evenings can be found in small peñas. The International Festival of Music and Dance, held every summer since 1952, stages concerts in the Alhambra's palaces and the Generalife's open-air theatre, and the city orchestra plays at the Auditorio Manuel de Falla through the year.

Matera has conservatory concerts, a summer jazz festival and the Festa della Bruna, its patron saint's feast, but little in between.

Granada has a bathing tradition to draw on. Hammams in the lower Albaicín recreate the Moorish sequence of warm, tepid and cold pools, and the spa towns of Lanjarón and Alhama de Granada are within an hour.

Matera has no baths of its own. You unwind in hotel spas, some with candlelit pools cut into the rock, or simply in the stillness of the Sassi early in the morning.