Lecce or Milan?

On beaches the two are about as far apart as they get. Lecce itself is inland, but within the hour you reach the pale coves and sea stacks of Torre dell'Orso on the Adriatic, or the long, fine sand of Porto Cesareo on the Ionian. In summer the coast shapes every day of the stay.

Milan has no sea at all. Swimming means the Idroscalo basin, a city pool, or a train to the pebbly lidos of Lake Como and Lake Maggiore. That makes a pleasant summer outing, but it is not a beach vacation.

Lecce's cooking is entirely its own. Breakfast is a warm pasticciotto with iced espresso and almond milk, simple osterie serve ciceri e tria and fava purée with chicory, and dinner comes with dark Negroamaro. It is honest food at modest cost, but there is little beyond Apulian cooking.

Milan gives a food lover much more to work with. Alongside saffron risotto and the cotoletta, it has a serious tier of fine dining and some of Italy's best cooking from other regions. Aperitivo around the Navigli, Brera and Isola can turn early evening into a meal of its own.

Lecce's strength is the townscape itself. The old town is carved almost entirely in honey-coloured Baroque limestone, from the facade of Santa Croce to the enclosed Piazza del Duomo at dusk, and half a Roman amphitheatre lies below Piazza Sant'Oronzo. Its museums, though, are modest.

Milan has fewer old streets to wander but far weightier sights: Leonardo's Last Supper, the rooftop of the Duomo among its spires, the Pinacoteca di Brera, and Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà in the Castello Sforzesco. If your trip is built around great works of art, Milan gives you more.

A night out in Lecce means aperitivo on the piazzas, then wine and cocktail bars in the lanes of the old town, with students keeping weekends going late. If you want to dance in summer, you drive to the beach clubs around Gallipoli.

Milan has a real scene. It runs from the canal-side bars of the Navigli to the dressy clubs of Corso Como, with warehouse nights on the city's edges and a gay quarter around Porta Venezia. It is stylish rather than wild, and it thins out in August, just when Lecce's coast is at its liveliest.

Neither city has much countryside on its doorstep. Lecce sits on a flat plain of olive groves and red earth, and Milan on the hazy Po plain. In Lecce the outdoors means the sea: clifftop paths and sea caves between Roca Vecchia and Leuca, birdwatching at the Le Cesine wetlands, and good snorkelling and diving.

Milan reaches more varied country. The wooded shores of Lake Como and Lake Maggiore are within an hour, the Grigne ridges offer serious hiking and via ferrata, and in winter there are ski slopes for anyone willing to spend a full day getting there and back.

Lecce is the base for the Salento. Otranto's cathedral mosaic, Gallipoli's island old town and Galatina's frescoed basilica are close by, with white Ostuni and the trulli of Alberobello further north. Most of these trips, though, work far better with a hire car.

Milan wins on both reach and ease. High-speed trains bring Verona and Turin within about an hour, with Bologna only a little further. Bergamo and the lakeside villages of Bellagio and Varenna are just as close, and the Certosa di Pavia, Mantua, Cremona and Lugano all make simple days out without driving.

Neither city is built around children, so the real difference is the kind of day you get. Lecce offers a slow, outdoor one: an old town mostly free of traffic, piazzas full of families in the evening, and the shallow sand of Porto Cesareo for small children. Milan has what Lecce lacks, from the submarine and trains of the science museum to Leolandia and Gardaland for older children, though its big sights mostly appeal to adults.

Both historic centres are flat and easy to walk. In Lecce that is where the ease ends. Local railways across the Salento are slow and infrequent and the beach buses run only in summer, so most visitors hire a car and park outside the walls.

In Milan you need no car at all. Five colour-coded metro lines, a dense tram network with its old orange cars, and direct trains to the lakes and nearby towns cover almost every journey. The long transfer from Malpensa airport is the main nuisance.

Lecce's shopping is something you do in passing on an evening walk through the old town. A few fashion shops on the main streets, food shops with Negroamaro and taralli, and small carvings in the same honey-coloured stone as the churches make good last-day gifts, but there is not much more to find.

Milan has every kind of shopping, not only luxury. Corso Buenos Aires is one long high street for everyday buys, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II has some of the city's oldest shops under its glass roof, and Porta Ticinese is good for vintage clothes. On weekends the antique markets along the Navigli add secondhand finds, so even on a modest budget you can fill a day here.

Lecce is far easier on the wallet. Pastries, trattoria meals and local wine cost little, and bed and breakfasts in old palazzi are fairly priced for most of the year. August is the exception, when the whole Salento fills up and the hire car adds to the bill.

Milan is Italy's most expensive city. Hotels are the heaviest cost, and trade fairs and fashion weeks push prices higher still. Aperitivo snacks, set lunch menus for office workers and a room near a metro stop outside the centre all help, but a stay here still costs noticeably more.

Lecce's theatres, the Politeama Greco and the Paisiello, put on a modest season. The local music to look for is pizzica, the fast tambourine dance of the Salento, which you hear at village festivals through the summer and which peaks with the Notte della Taranta in Melpignano in August.

Milan is in a different class. La Scala is one of the world's great opera houses, and around it are the Piccolo Teatro, a fine symphony orchestra, jazz rooms and summer concerts at San Siro. The two follow opposite calendars: Milan's opera quietens in summer, just when Lecce's music fills the villages.

Rest in Lecce comes from the rhythm of the place. Shops close for the long afternoon, and evenings are spent sitting in the piazzas. For a proper soak, Santa Cesarea Terme has sulphur pools in grottoes above the sea, and several masserie, old fortified farmhouses on the plain, are now quiet spa retreats.

Milan's version is a break in a working city. There is a thermal spa complex south of the centre with outdoor pools and saunas, a few good hotel spas, and in summer the restored 1930s Bagni Misteriosi pools. Real calm, though, means taking the train to the lakes.