Heidelberg or Verona?

Neither city is on the coast, but only Verona offers a real swim. From Heidelberg the choice is the town's outdoor pools or the gravel-pit lakes on the Rhine plain. They are pleasant for a hot afternoon but not much more.

Verona has Lake Garda about half an hour away, warm and calm by midsummer, with lidos, grassy shores and small pebble beaches at Peschiera, Lazise and Sirmione. It is still a day out rather than a beach vacation, and the shores get crowded on summer weekends.

Both cities cook hearty regional food and both lean on wine, but you eat noticeably better in Verona. In Heidelberg that means Maultaschen, Schäufele, Flammkuchen and spring asparagus with Riesling from the Bergstrasse, and the good meals are in Neuenheim and the village taverns rather than on the Hauptstrasse.

Verona's risotto with Amarone, bigoli with duck and bollito with pearà come from plain osterie around Piazza delle Erbe and in Veronetta. Valpolicella, Soave and Bardolino are all made within a short drive. Neither city has much beyond its own tradition, and both have tired tourist cooking near their main sights.

Heidelberg's appeal is one very photogenic picture: the red sandstone castle ruin above a baroque Altstadt, the Old Bridge with its gate towers, and Germany's oldest university with its graffiti-covered Student Prison. Verona has far more depth, with Roman, medieval and Renaissance layers packed into one UNESCO-listed loop of the Adige.

The Arena, the Roman theatre, the Scaliger tombs, San Zeno's bronze doors and the Carlo Scarpa galleries in Castelvecchio fill two or three full days, while Heidelberg can be seen in one or two. Verona's Romanesque and Gothic churches alone outclass most of what Heidelberg has to show.

Neither city is made for big nights out, and the difference is in tone. Heidelberg's evenings belong to the students: small pubs packed along the Untere Strasse and old student taverns with carved tables. They are lively in term time and quiet out of it, and for clubbing people take the train to Mannheim or Frankfurt.

In Verona the evening is the aperitivo, a spritz or a glass of Valpolicella at tables on Piazza delle Erbe, and the wine bars in Veronetta stay open later. In summer the opera crowd leaving the Arena near midnight livens up the centre late in the evening, and Heidelberg has nothing like it.

Both cities have green country at the edge of town, but it is of a different character. Heidelberg's is woodland: the Philosophers' Walk, the funicular up the Königstuhl and forest trails over the Odenwald hills. The Neckar cycle path and the Palatinate Forest are within an hour.

Verona looks towards the Alps instead. Valpolicella's vineyard hills begin just north of the city, Lake Garda brings Monte Baldo's ridge walks, paragliding and windsurfing, and the Lessinia plateau has gorges and high pastures. In Heidelberg you can walk into the forest from the hotel door, while Verona's best outdoors usually means a drive.

Heidelberg is a good base and Verona an outstanding one. From Heidelberg, Speyer's cathedral, Schwetzingen's palace, Worms, Maulbronn and the castle villages of the Neckar valley are all easy, and Strasbourg is possible for a long day.

From Verona you can reach Venice, Padua's Scrovegni Chapel, Palladio's Vicenza and Mantua by train, and each is a major destination in its own right. Add the harbour towns on Lake Garda and the cellars of Valpolicella and Soave, and a week of outings would hardly repeat itself.

The two are about even for children, with different strengths. Heidelberg has more in the town itself: the funicular, the small fairy-tale park on the Königstuhl, the riverside zoo and boat trips. The Technik Museum Speyer, with its space shuttle and submarine, is close by.

Verona's main draws are outside the city: Gardaland, the drive-through safari at Parco Natura Viva and calm lake swimming, all of which need a car or a transfer. On the other hand, its flat pedestrian centre is far easier with a pushchair than Heidelberg's cobbled slopes, although summer afternoons can be very hot.

Both centres are made for walking, and the real difference is in how you get further out. Heidelberg's Altstadt is a long strip along the Hauptstrasse below a steep castle hill, and the station is far enough out that you need a tram. One fare system covers trams, buses and the S-Bahn across the Rhine-Neckar area, which makes day trips simple.

Verona's centre is flat and compact inside its river loop, with no trams or metro and no need for them. Its trains to Venice, Milan and Lake Garda are excellent, but the Valpolicella villages and the Lessinia have few buses, so a car helps there.

Verona's shopping is the smarter of the two, though people rarely visit either city to shop. Heidelberg's long Hauptstrasse runs from German chain stores at one end to cuckoo clocks and beer steins at the other, with a few independent boutiques in the side lanes.

Verona's marble-paved Via Mazzini has Italian fashion and accessory labels, and the streets off it have jewellers and shoe shops. In both cities the best things to take home are edible or drinkable: Bergstrasse wine from Heidelberg, and Amarone, Garda olive oil and pandoro from Verona. Serious shoppers go to Frankfurt or Milan.

Expect similar costs, with hotels the main expense in both. Heidelberg has few rooms for its number of visitors, and congresses and graduations fill them, so many people stay in Mannheim and come in by train. Bakeries, student cafés and the regional travel ticket keep everything else reasonable.

In Verona, summer opera nights and trade fairs make rooms in the centre scarce, and staying near the station or in Veronetta softens the bill. Walking around the centre costs nothing, and the local wine is good value.

Heidelberg has a solid programme for a small town: opera and drama at the municipal theatre, the Heidelberger Frühling chamber music festival in spring, and plays and musicals in the castle courtyard in summer.

In summer Verona offers something on another scale: grand opera in the Roman Arena on most evenings from June to early September, performed for thousands of people on the ancient stone tiers. Outside that season the programme at the Teatro Filarmonico is modest, so timing your visit matters far more in Verona than in Heidelberg.

For a proper soak, both cities send you a short way out of town. From Heidelberg that means the thermal complexes of the Kraichgau, or Baden-Baden about an hour south. From Verona it means the lakeside spa at Sirmione, the spring-fed thermal park near Lazise or the springs at Caldiero, used since Roman times.

The everyday calm differs too. In Heidelberg it is evenings on the Neckar meadows and forest paths above the river. In Verona it is long lunches, the evening passeggiata along the Adige and the terraces of the Giardino Giusti.