Lucca or Salzburg?

Lucca has a genuine seaside within reach. The Versilia coast begins at Viareggio, about 25 minutes away by train, with wide, gently shelving sand lined with beach-club umbrellas, and wilder dunes at the Lecciona backed by pine woods. Spending a morning on the old streets and an afternoon in warm sea is an easy and natural pairing.

Salzburg has no sea and no sand. Swimming means the clear green lakes of the Salzkammergut, entered from lawns, jetties and pebbles. The water is cooler and the season shorter, which makes it a pleasant hot-day escape rather than a beach trip.

Lucca eats better and more cheaply. Its plain country cooking of farro soup, tordelli in ragù, chestnut-flour dishes and street slices of cecina is served in family trattorias inside the walls, with good local olive oil and Montecarlo wines alongside. The range is narrow, but the quality holds up.

Salzburg's strengths lie in coffee and cake in its historic coffee houses and in beer from wooden barrels at the monastery brewery in Mülln. Its menus of schnitzel, dumplings and Salzburger Nockerl are hearty, but in the old town they are often pricey and aimed at tour groups, so the better meals are out in the suburbs and hill inns.

Salzburg has the richer set of sights. The prince-archbishops' Baroque cathedral, Residenz and arcaded squares form a UNESCO-listed whole, with one of Europe's largest intact medieval fortresses above them. Add Mozart's two houses, the St Peter catacombs, Mirabell and a modern art museum on the Mönchsberg, and you have a fuller two or three days.

Lucca's appeal is quieter and more architectural. Its Renaissance walls survive complete, and it has the carved Romanesque façades of San Michele and San Frediano and the oval Piazza dell'Anfiteatro. Its museums are modest, so the pleasure lies in the streets themselves.

Neither city is a place for late nights, and both centres are quiet by midnight. What differs is the style of the evening. Lucca means an aperitivo in a piazza followed by a stroll on the walls, while Salzburg means a concert and then litre mugs at long tables in a beer hall.

For dancing, Lucca's young crowd heads to the Versilia beach discos in summer, a drive or taxi away. Salzburg's goes to Munich, about an hour and a half away by train.

Salzburg sits right against the Alps. Wooded ridges with walking paths rise inside the city, a cable car climbs the Untersberg to about 1,800m, and the Gaisberg is used for paragliding. Within the hour you can reach the Salzkammergut lakes, the Königssee in Berchtesgaden National Park and the ski areas.

Lucca's own outdoors is gentler: the tree-lined ring of the walls, cycle paths along the Serchio and olive-clad hills. The Apuan Alps and the Garfagnana woods offer serious hiking, but they mean a day out rather than a walk from the hotel.

Lucca has the better spread of day trips, many of them on one railway line. Pisa is half an hour away and Florence a little over an hour, with Pistoia and Montecatini on the way. The villa gardens at Marlia and Collodi, Pietrasanta's sculpture studios and the Carrara quarries are all close, and the Cinque Terre and San Gimignano are possible with an early start.

Salzburg's excursions are strong but more scattered. They include Hallstatt and the Wolfgangsee villages, salt mines at Hallein and Berchtesgaden, the Werfen fortress and Munich by train. Several of the lake villages are hard to reach without a car.

Salzburg gives children more to do. The trick fountains at Hellbrunn, the zoo next door, the hands-on Haus der Natur and the marionette theatre fill the city days. The salt mines add wooden miners' slides and underground boat rides, though cobbles and steep lanes make pushchairs hard work.

Lucca is flat, so it is easy with small children, and riding a family quadricycle round the walls is a highlight. Pinocchio Park and the beach are nearby, but within the walls there is little aimed at children beyond churches and palaces.

Both centres are compact, largely car-free and walkable, and in both a car only earns its keep for the countryside. In Lucca you move by bike. The town is flat and rental shops sit at every gate, but buses to the villas and villages are sparse.

Salzburg is hillier on foot. It makes up for this with a dense trolleybus network reaching Hellbrunn and the Untersberg cable car, and it has mainline trains to Munich and Vienna.

Salzburg has the slightly more distinctive shopping. It has made-to-measure Tracht workshops selling dirndls and loden, a farmers' market and one of the region's best-known Advent markets on Domplatz, although Getreidegasse is mostly chains and souvenirs.

Lucca's Via Fillungo keeps old Liberty-style shopfronts and delicatessens for oil and buccellato. Its real draw is the monthly antiques market around the cathedral. Neither city offers luxury depth.

Lucca is the easier city on the wallet. Trattoria meals and regional trains are fairly priced, the walls and many churches cost nothing, and sleeping just outside the gates cuts the main expense.

Salzburg is expensive for its size all year, with hotels and old-town restaurants priced well above the Austrian norm and costs climbing further during the summer festival and Advent. A city card and a room across the river or in the suburbs help.

Salzburg is in a different league. The Salzburg Festival fills the Festspielhaus and the cliff-cut Felsenreitschule with leading opera and orchestral performers, Jedermann is staged before the cathedral, and Mozart Week and the Easter Festival add further seasons. Outside these, the Mozarteum, the Landestheater and nightly palace concerts keep music going all year.

Lucca's music is built around Puccini: church recitals of his arias, a season at the Teatro del Giglio and open-air opera by the lake at Torre del Lago in summer. It is charming, but much smaller in scale.

Neither city has its own hot springs, and both relax you mainly through their slow pace. Salzburg does have the Paracelsus Bad, a public pool and sauna in the city park. Its spa excursions lean towards brine at Bad Reichenhall and radon springs in the Gastein valley.

Lucca's calm comes from traffic-free streets, long lunches and evening walks on the shaded walls. For a soak you take the train to Montecatini's belle époque spas, the cave pools at Monsummano or the steam grottoes of Bagni di Lucca.