Heidelberg or Zermatt?

Neither town works for swimming. Heidelberg at least has outdoor pools, and the gravel-pit lakes on the Rhine plain about half an hour away make a pleasant hot afternoon, while Zermatt's mountain tarns are glacial meltwater for photographs, leaving hotel pools as the only option. In both cases the sea belongs to another trip.

Both eat well for their size without offering much range. Heidelberg's strength is the hearty cooking of the Kurpfalz and Baden, white asparagus in spring and local Riesling and Pinot from the Bergstrasse and the Palatinate. Students keep cheap food plentiful, and the better meals are in the Altstadt side streets and Neuenheim.

Zermatt serves Valais Alpine food, raclette, fondue and air-dried beef with Petite Arvine or Cornalin, and its best moments are long lunches at chalets around Findeln or Zum See with the Matterhorn in view. It has more ambitious fine dining but almost nothing cheap, and many kitchens close between seasons.

For sightseeing, Heidelberg is clearly the better choice. The red sandstone castle ruin above the river, the baroque Altstadt, the Old Bridge and the university with its graffitied Student Prison make a rich, compact set that deserves a day or two.

Zermatt's heritage is about mountaineering: the Matterhorn Museum on the 1865 first ascent, the climbers' cemetery and the old larch barns of the Hinterdorf, which together fill a morning. Its most historic attraction, the Gornergrat railway, is really a way up the mountain.

Heidelberg has the livelier evenings, although both places are small. In term time students fill the pubs of the Untere Strasse and the old fraternity taverns, and Mannheim or Frankfurt are a short train ride away for a proper club night.

Going out in Zermatt means winter après-ski, loud and cheerful in the bars on the slopes from late afternoon, with a few late bars along the main street. In summer the hikers and climbers go to bed early.

Here Zermatt is in a different league. The Matterhorn rises over the village, dozens of four-thousand-metre peaks and the Gorner Glacier surround it, and lifts reach above 3,800m. That means skiing across into Italy and, in summer, hundreds of kilometres of high trails such as the Five Lakes walk, with marmots and ibex along the way.

Heidelberg has gentler country to offer: the Philosophers' Walk, forest trails on the Königstuhl and the Heiligenberg, and the Neckar cycle path past riverside castles. It suits easy walking and cycling, not a mountain trip.

Heidelberg makes the far better base for outings. Speyer's Romanesque cathedral and the palace gardens at Schwetzingen are about half an hour away, Worms, Lorsch and Maulbronn are easy to reach, and Frankfurt, Mainz and the Palatinate wine villages are around an hour away.

Zermatt sits at the end of a valley, so every outing starts with a long train ride down to the Rhône. Sion, with its two castle hills and its vineyards, is the most rewarding, but most visitors spend their spare days up the mountain instead.

Heidelberg gives children more variety: the funicular and fairy-tale park on the Königstuhl, a compact zoo, boats up the river, and the Technik Museum Speyer, where they can climb into a space shuttle and a submarine. The cobbles and slopes of the Altstadt are the main nuisance with a pushchair.

Zermatt's appeal is its car-free calm, its ski schools and nursery slopes, and marmots on summer walks. It has no zoo or theme park, rainy days are hard to fill, and the highest viewpoints can be too cold and thin-aired for small children, so it works best for families who already ski or hike.

Both are easy without a car, and Zermatt is slightly the easier. The whole village is car-free and compact, and the cog railway, the underground funicular to Sunnegga and the gondolas are all a short walk from the centre. Leaving the valley, though, takes over an hour by train.

Heidelberg's Altstadt is a long strip to walk along the Hauptstrasse, and you need a tram from the station. Its shared Rhine-Neckar fare system makes travelling around the region far simpler than it is from the Alps.

Heidelberg has more to browse, with high-street chains and department stores along the long pedestrian Hauptstrasse, independent bookshops and boutiques in the side lanes, and Bergstrasse wine to take home. Zermatt's single main street is mostly watch and jewellery boutiques for wealthy skiers, plus souvenir shops, though its mountaineering outfitters are genuinely useful if you need gear.

Heidelberg is much the cheaper of the two. Hotels are the main expense, and many visitors save by staying in Mannheim, while student cafés, bakeries and the regional transport ticket keep everything else modest.

Zermatt is among the most expensive places in the Alps, with steep rooms, costly mountain meals and lift tickets that almost every visitor needs. Self-catering, supermarket picnics and a bed down in Täsch soften the bill, but it stays a splurge.

Heidelberg has a real season. The municipal theatre stages opera, drama and dance, and the town also has a philharmonic orchestra, the Heidelberger Frühling festival in spring and summer performances in the castle courtyard. Mannheim's larger opera house is twenty minutes away.

Zermatt has no theatre or concert hall, so its music depends on when you go: Zermatt Unplugged in spring and a chamber music festival in late summer. The rest of the year, evenings mean dinner and the occasional après-ski band.

Zermatt has a slight edge for pampering, thanks to its many excellent hotel spas with pools and mountain views, some of which sell day access, and car-free streets that stay quiet at night. Neither town has thermal springs of its own.

Heidelberg's warm pools are in the Kraichgau bath complexes, half an hour away, or in Baden-Baden further south. In town, the calm comes in other forms: long evenings on the Neuenheim meadows, forest paths above the Philosophers' Walk and unhurried wine taverns.