La Spezia or Lecce?

At La Spezia a beach day is a trip out. You take the bus round the gulf to the sheltered strips at Lerici and San Terenzo, swim off the rocks at Portovenere and Palmaria, or catch the train to Monterosso for the longest sand in the Cinque Terre. The water is very clear, but the beaches are small, often pebbly and largely taken up by paid bathing establishments.

The Salento coast around Lecce has more and better beaches. There are long, shallow beaches of fine sand on the Ionian at Porto Cesareo and Punta Prosciutto, and pale coves and sea stacks at Torre dell'Orso, enough to build a whole summer around. The cost is getting there, which means a car or the seasonal buses.

Both cities cook firmly in their regional tradition and offer little beyond it, so the difference is mostly in kind. La Spezia's table is Ligurian and faces the sea: farinata from wood ovens, mussels farmed off Portovenere, trofie with pesto and crisp Cinque Terre whites.

Lecce has a slight edge for a food-led stay. It has a stronger daily ritual, from a warm pasticciotto with iced almond coffee at breakfast to ciceri e tria and orecchiette with turnip tops at dinner, with dark Negroamaro and Primitivo to drink. Eating well also costs less in its old-town osterie.

Here Lecce is well ahead. Its whole old town is carved Baroque limestone, with the facade of Santa Croce, the enclosed Piazza del Duomo at dusk, a half-excavated Roman amphitheatre and layers of Messapian ruins underground, so simply walking about is the sightseeing.

La Spezia is a nineteenth-century naval town of arcaded streets and Liberty facades. Its best rewards are indoors: the early Italian paintings of the Museo Amedeo Lia and the Lunigiana stele statues in Castello San Giorgio. The region's real heritage, such as San Pietro at Portovenere, lies out along the coast.

Neither city is somewhere you go for a night out, but Lecce keeps going longer. A spritz on Via del Prione or the seafront is pleasant enough, yet La Spezia empties early, and many of its visitors want to be on the trails in the morning.

In Lecce the evening starts with the passeggiata and moves into the wine and cocktail bars of the old-town lanes. Students keep weekends going late for much of the year, and in summer there are open-air clubs on the coast near Gallipoli, though you need to drive.

La Spezia has much the stronger landscape on its doorstep. It has the vine-terraced cliffs of the Cinque Terre national park, with the coastal path and quieter high ridge routes, plus the forts and sea caves of Palmaria and the pine woods of Montemarcello. Serious mountain hiking is an hour inland in the jagged Apuan Alps.

Around Lecce the land is flat olive country, better for easy cycling than walking. Its outdoors is the coast: clifftop paths and sea caves between Otranto and Leuca, birdwatching at the Alimini lakes and Le Cesine, and good snorkelling.

La Spezia is one of the easiest bases in Italy for day trips. All five Cinque Terre villages are a short train ride away, Portovenere and Lerici sit on either side of the gulf, and walled Sarzana and Roman Luni are close inland. Pisa and Lucca are about an hour away, and Portofino and Genoa make an easy day along the Riviera.

Lecce has fine places within reach too: Otranto's mosaic floor, Gallipoli on its island, the frescoes at Galatina, and Ostuni and the trulli of Alberobello further north. They are more spread out, though, and most need a car rather than a train.

With children the two are much alike: relaxed and safe, but without a zoo, aquarium or theme park. In La Spezia the best days are boat trips round Portovenere and the sheltered beaches at Lerici. The steep villages and crowded trains are more for older children.

Lecce is better for toddlers on the sand, because the shallow beaches of Porto Cesareo are ideal for them, and its traffic-free piazzas fill with families in the evening. Midsummer heat means the day has to be planned around a long afternoon rest.

Both centres are flat and easy to walk. The difference starts once you leave town. From La Spezia, regional trains run through the Cinque Terre to Genoa and inland to Pisa, buses go to Portovenere and Lerici, and ferries cross the gulf from spring to autumn, so a car is more trouble than it is worth. The weak point is the crowded summer trains.

From Lecce, fast trains go north to Bari, but the local lines across the Salento are slow and infrequent, and the beach buses run only in summer. Most visitors hire a car and park outside the old walls.

What you carry home from La Spezia is mostly edible: pesto, olive oil, Monterosso anchovies and a bottle of sweet Sciacchetrà, with Carrara marble pieces sold in the towns nearby. Via del Prione and Corso Cavour cover everyday clothes and shoes, but there is little for anyone after fashion or design.

Lecce has a craft of its own in cartapesta, the papier-mâché saints and nativity figures made in old-town workshops, along with small carvings in the local limestone and ceramics from Grottaglie. Beyond that its main streets have only a handful of fashion shops, so it is good for browsing but not for a shopping trip.

Lecce goes further on a budget. Street pastries, trattoria meals and local wine are cheap, and B&Bs in old palazzi are fairly priced outside August, although a hire car adds to the bill.

La Spezia is cheaper than staying in the Cinque Terre villages themselves, and its trains and buses cost little. Even so, summer rooms cost about what they do elsewhere in Western Europe, and trail passes, boat trips and bathing establishments add up over a stay.

Both have a modest theatre season, but Lecce has a living tradition that La Spezia lacks. Pizzica, the fast tambourine dance of the Salento, is played at village festivals all summer and peaks at the huge open-air Notte della Taranta in Melpignano. The Teatro Paisiello and Politeama Greco also stage some opera.

La Spezia offers plays and concerts at the Teatro Civico and a long-established summer jazz festival. For opera you have to go to Genoa or Pisa.

Lecce is the more restful choice. Shops close for the long afternoon break, and the sulphur pools at Santa Cesarea Terme, set in grottoes above the sea, are under an hour away. Some of the old fortified masserie on the plain now have quiet country spas.

Around La Spezia, wellness mostly means a hotel spa or the small thermal baths at Equi Terme up in the Lunigiana. The calm comes from a long lunch in Tellaro or a quiet afternoon on Palmaria rather than from any bathing culture.