Kotor or Matera?

Neither town has a beach of its own, but Kotor at least sits on the water. You can swim from the jetties and pebble strips towards Dobrota and Muo any afternoon, and the sand at Jaz and the coves around Budva and Sveti Stefan are half an hour away.

Matera is inland, so swimming means a car and a 45-minute drive to the wide sandy shores at Metaponto and Policoro. Those pine-backed beaches are shallow and gentle, kinder to small children than Kotor's inner bay, but most visitors to Matera simply skip the sea.

Kotor eats from the bay: mussels, black cuttlefish risotto and grilled fish, with Njegusi ham and Vranac from the mountains. The catch is that the old-town squares serve the same menus to the same crowds, and the good konobas are out along the shore in Dobrota, Prcanj and Perast.

Matera's table is more distinctive and more dependable: crusty pane di Matera, crapiata, hand-made cavatelli, crackling peperoni cruschi and Aglianico, with the better meals in the upper town around Via Ridola. Neither has much range beyond regional cooking, and Matera has nothing like Kotor's small green market outside the walls.

Kotor's old town is a beautiful UNESCO-listed whole: marble lanes, the Cathedral of St Tryphon, the palazzi of seafaring families and the walls zigzagging up to St John's fortress. It is compact, though, and its pleasure is the townscape rather than a list of sights.

Matera offers something stranger and older. The Sassi are cave dwellings lived in since prehistoric times, with rock churches holding Byzantine frescoes, and the upper town adds the Palombaro Lungo cistern, the Museo Ridola, Carlo Levi's panorama at Palazzo Lanfranchi and MUSMA's sculpture in carved rooms. There is more to see, and more of it you will not find anywhere else.

Both are towns for an evening drink rather than a night out, but Kotor has a little more going on. A few bars inside the walls stay open late in summer, there is a small club scene, and Budva's seafront clubs are half an hour away for anyone who wants to stay up until dawn.

Matera has no clubs at all. Its evenings are the passeggiata along Via del Corso, a long dinner and a glass in a cave wine bar above the lit Sassi, which suits couples far better than groups.

Kotor's setting is on another scale. Limestone walls rise more than 1,000m almost straight from a fjord-like bay, the Ladder of Kotor starts at the town gates, Lovcen National Park's beech woods and karst meadows lie above, and kayaks take you along the shore villages.

Matera's landscape is quieter and more intimate: the Gravina gorge directly below the Sassi and the stony Murgia plateau opposite, with abandoned rock churches and Neolithic village sites along the trails. Its bigger scenery, the Lucanian Dolomites and the Pollino forests, is an hour or more away by car.

Both make strong bases, though Matera's reach is wider. Kotor's outings circle its bay: Perast and the island church of Our Lady of the Rocks, then Herceg Novi, Budva and Sveti Stefan, with boats serving several of them. Inland, Cetinje and the cliff monastery of Ostrog make longer days, and Dubrovnik, across the Croatian border, is about two hours away.

Matera, on the border with Puglia, puts two regions within about an hour. Altamura and Gravina are next door, with the trulli of Alberobello, the white towns of the Valle d'Itria, Castel del Monte and Polignano a Mare further out, plus Craco and the peak villages of Basilicata. You need a car for almost all of them.

Kotor's old town is flat, car-free and small enough that children cannot get lost, which gives it a slight edge for families. Its street cats win over young visitors, the jetties along the bay make calm swimming easy, and the boat to Perast's island church is a simple outing. The one hard part is the fortress climb, which is too steep and hot for small legs in summer.

Matera's Sassi are a maze of uneven stone stairways where a pushchair is useless, with little shade on summer afternoons. Older children enjoy the caves, the cistern and scrambling into the gorge, but families with toddlers need a carrier and a car to reach the Ionian sand.

The two work much the same way: a car-free centre on foot and a patchy network beyond it. Kotor's old town is flat and crossed in minutes, on marble that turns slippery in rain, and buses and water taxis reach the bay towns, though not often enough, while the single road round the bay jams in summer.

Matera's upper town is flat but the Sassi are reached by leg-sapping stairways, and the town is off the national rail network, with only a slow narrow-gauge line to Bari. In both places a hire car makes the region far easier, and Kotor has the advantage of Tivat airport a short drive away.

Neither is a shopping destination, and in both the best things to take home are edible. In Kotor that means Vranac, Njegusi ham, honey and olive oil from the green market and delicatessens, with silver filigree and coral jewellery in the lanes and brand shopping out at the Tivat marina.

Matera's crafts are more particular to the place, the painted cuccù whistle, tufa-stone carvings and papier-mâché, and its upper town has the ordinary Italian high-street shops along Via del Corso that Kotor lacks.

Costs come out much the same, and in both the trick is to sleep just outside the famous quarter. In Kotor, rooms and terrace restaurants inside the walls charge resort rates in July and August, while private apartments in Dobrota or Muo and the months of May, June and September are noticeably cheaper.

In Matera the premium is for the cave hotels of the Sassi, while guesthouses in the upper town and its simple trattorias cost much less. Its main pleasures, walking the Sassi and the Murgia, are free.

Neither has a year-round stage, so evenings depend on the summer calendar and a few set-piece occasions. Kotor's summer festival brings recitals and choirs into its squares and churches, and its carnival and Boka Night fill the bay with masked parades and decorated boats. Matera has conservatory concerts, a summer jazz festival staged against the Sassi, and the Festa della Bruna, when the papier-mâché float is ritually torn apart.

The real difference is where the spas are. Kotor's are ordinary resort-hotel spas along the bay or at the Tivat marina, while some of Matera's are in candlelit cave rooms with pools cut into the rock, which makes unwinding there more memorable.

In Kotor, calm means leaving the walls: early mornings on the water and long lunches in the shore villages, since the old town at a summer midday is anything but restful. In Matera it comes from quiet mornings in the Sassi and dusk over the gorge, especially from autumn to spring.