Heidelberg or Nuremberg?

Neither city is a place to swim, but Nuremberg has the better summer fallback. The Franconian Lake District, about an hour south, is a chain of reservoirs led by the Brombachsee, with grassy shores, small sandy strips and room for sailing. It makes a proper day out with children in July or August.

Heidelberg makes do with outdoor pools and the flooded gravel pits on the Rhine plain, about half an hour away. They are fine for a hot afternoon, but they are not much of an outing and nothing to plan a trip around.

Heidelberg's strength is in the glass rather than on the plate. Riesling and Pinot come from the Bergstrasse vineyards on the edge of town, spring brings white asparagus, and the cooking is hearty Baden fare such as Maultaschen and Flammkuchen. The places on the Hauptstrasse that cater to day-trippers are uneven, so the better meals take some seeking out in the Altstadt side streets, in Neuenheim or in the village wine taverns.

Nuremberg's food has a clearer identity, and there is more to look forward to at the table. Finger-sized bratwurst grilled over beechwood come on pewter plates, Lebkuchen is sold all year, and Franconia's dense spread of small breweries supplies the taverns and the beer gardens along the Pegnitz, including cloudy, unfiltered Kellerbier. Beyond that the restaurants are ordinary, but the taverns alone are a reason to linger.

Nuremberg has more depth. Inside the near-complete medieval walls are the Kaiserburg, St Sebaldus, St Lorenz and Dürer's house, and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum could take a day on its own. Then there is a second, darker layer that Heidelberg has no equivalent for: the vast Rally Grounds with their documentation centre, and Courtroom 600 where the war crimes trials took place.

Heidelberg's appeal is more picturesque than encyclopaedic. Its red sandstone castle ruin looks down on an old town that survived far more intact than Nuremberg's carefully rebuilt centre. The university, Germany's oldest, adds the Old University and the graffiti-covered Student Prison. It is beautiful and quickly seen.

Evenings are much the same size in both, low-key and bar-based, but they feel different. Heidelberg's night out is squeezed into the Untere Strasse and the old student taverns, lively in term time and quiet out of it, and for a proper club you take the train to Mannheim or Frankfurt.

Nuremberg's most interesting nights are outside the walls in Gostenhof, where cafés turn into bars and alternative venues fill the old working-class streets. In summer the crowd spills onto the riverbanks.

Both offer gentle walking and cycling country rather than drama. Heidelberg has the advantage that the woods start right at the old town. You can take the funicular up the Königstuhl, walk the Philosophers' Walk, or find Celtic ramparts on the Heiligenberg, all without needing transport out of town.

Nuremberg's own Reichswald is flat pine forest. Its best scenery is Franconian Switzerland, an hour north-east, where limestone towers, caves and some of Germany's best-known rock climbing give it a rougher character than anything near Heidelberg.

Both are excellent bases, and the choice comes down to which region you want. From Heidelberg you get the Rhine: the great cathedrals of Speyer and Worms, Schwetzingen's palace gardens, Maulbronn's monastery, the Palatinate wine villages, and Strasbourg if you are willing to make a long day of it.

From Nuremberg you get Franconia and Bavaria: Bamberg's smoked-beer taverns, Regensburg on the Danube, Würzburg's Residence, the walled towns of Rothenburg and Dinkelsbühl, and Munich by fast train.

Both are safe, manageable cities with children, and both have steep cobbled climbs to the castle. Heidelberg's highlights are the funicular ride with a small fairy-tale park at the top and the Technik Museum Speyer, where children can climb into a space shuttle.

Nuremberg plays on its toy-making past with a Toy Museum and a railway museum full of locomotives. It also has a large zoo in old wooded quarries with a dolphin house, and a play park run by a toy brand in Zirndorf.

Nuremberg is the easier city to arrive in and move around. The station sits just outside the southern gate, the walled centre is small enough to walk across, and the U-Bahn and trams reach the zoo, the Rally Grounds and the Palace of Justice on one ticket.

Heidelberg's Altstadt is a long, narrow strip, and the main station is some way west of it, so most arrivals take a tram in. After that, the Rhine-Neckar fare system makes regional hops to Speyer or Schwetzingen easy without a car.

Neither is a shopping destination, and each has chain stores along its main pedestrian streets. Heidelberg's Hauptstrasse is the longer stroll, with independent bookshops in the side lanes, and Bergstrasse wine is the best thing to take home.

Nuremberg's souvenirs are more particular to the place: Lebkuchen in decorated tins, wooden toys and the workshops of the Handwerkerhof. In Advent the Christkindlesmarkt makes the city a real shopping trip, which Heidelberg has nothing to match.

Nuremberg goes noticeably further for the money. Beer and tavern meals are cheap and transport costs little, and outside trade-fair weeks and the Advent market, hotels are fairly priced.

Heidelberg's problem is beds. The town has few rooms for the number of people who visit, and congresses and graduations push prices up, so many travellers end up staying in Mannheim. Student cafés and bakeries keep eating there affordable.

The two programmes are similar in scale, regional rather than famous, and differ mainly in their summer settings. Heidelberg's highlights are the Heidelberger Frühling chamber music festival in spring and summer plays and musicals in the castle courtyard, with Mannheim's larger opera house twenty minutes away.

Nuremberg's Staatstheater stages opera and ballet in an Art Nouveau opera house. In summer the city puts on a large open-air orchestral concert in the Luitpoldhain, free folk music across the old town during the Bardentreffen, and a major rock festival by the Zeppelinfeld.

Neither city has historic baths of its own, and both rely on spa towns nearby. Nuremberg's are easier to reach: there is a large thermal spa with sauna gardens in Fürth, a short U-Bahn ride away, though visitors should expect mixed nude saunas. Bad Windsheim's saline pools are an hour west.

From Heidelberg you need to travel to the Kraichgau spas or to Baden-Baden. The town makes up for it with quiet evenings on the Neuenheim meadows and the forest paths above the Philosophers' Walk.