Lucerne or Luxembourg?

Neither city has a sea, but Lucerne's lake comes right into town. You can swim from the old wooden lake baths or the lawns at Ufschötti, a short walk from the Old Town, with mountains across the water.

Luxembourg's swimming lies out of town, at the Upper Sûre reservoir about an hour north or the old gravel pits at Remerschen. Both are fine for a hot day, but the trip makes them an outing rather than a quick dip between sights.

Luxembourg eats noticeably better. Its restaurants draw on French cooking with German, Belgian, Portuguese and Italian influences, and it has an unusually strong fine-dining tier for its size. Moselle Riesling and crémant give meals a local signature.

Lucerne sticks closer to hearty Swiss food: Chügelipastete, fondue, raclette and lake perch in wood-panelled guild houses. The quality is good, but the choice is narrow, and many places by the Chapel Bridge cater to tour groups.

The two are evenly matched, and both can be seen in a day or two. Lucerne's appeal is a picture-book medieval centre: the covered Chapel Bridge, frescoed squares, the climbable towers of the Musegg Wall and the carved Lion Monument, with the Rosengart Collection's Picasso and Klee for art.

Luxembourg's strength is its fortress setting. You walk through casemate tunnels cut into the rock and look down from the Corniche into the gorge-bottom Grund, and you can then cross to Kirchberg for contemporary art at MUDAM and the European institutions.

Neither is a place for a big night out, and both go quiet early. Lucerne's evenings mean wine bars and pubs along the Reuss, with a few cocktail bars near the station. Once a year Fasnacht turns the whole Old Town into an all-night carnival.

Luxembourg has slightly more going on, packed into pockets such as the old brewery site at Rives de Clausen and the late venues of Hollerich. Its international crowd of young professionals fills them on Thursdays and Fridays rather than at weekends.

This is Lucerne's biggest advantage. The city sits on a branching lake below Pilatus and Rigi, with Titlis and its year-round snow about an hour away, and it offers ridge walks in summer and skiing and sledging in winter.

Luxembourg's outdoors are gentler. Wooded gorges run through the city itself, and the mossy rock passages and beech forest of the Müllerthal lie half an hour away. There are also Ardennes hills and Moselle vineyard cycle paths, but no mountains or big views.

Both make excellent bases, and the difference lies in where you go. From Lucerne the outings are Swiss: Bern, Basel and Zurich each under an hour by train, and boats down the lake to the Rütli meadow and the William Tell country around Altdorf.

From Luxembourg you cross borders. Roman Trier in Germany and Metz in France are each under an hour away, and closer to home you have the castle at Vianden, Echternach's abbey and the Moselle wine villages.

Lucerne gives children more to do. The Swiss Museum of Transport is a full day of trains, planes and a planetarium, and the steamers, cogwheel railways and summer toboggan run on Pilatus feel like rides of their own, weather permitting.

Luxembourg is calm and safe, and the casemate tunnels are a real adventure. Beyond them there is only the small Parc Merveilleux at Bettembourg and castle outings, so it suits two or three days rather than a longer family stay.

Both are among the easiest places to get around, and in neither do you need a car. Lucerne is flat and compact along the river, with the station, boat piers and Old Town side by side. Its integrated Swiss tickets carry you straight onto lake steamers and mountain railways.

Luxembourg is built on several levels, so you will use public lifts and a funicular between the upper town and the valley quarters. Its trump card is that trams, buses and trains across the whole country are free.

Lucerne sells watches and Luxembourg sells fashion. In Lucerne the big watch and jewellery houses on Schwanenplatz and the lakefront sit beside shops full of army knives, chocolate and cuckoo clocks, all aimed at the tour groups. A few independent boutiques are tucked into the Old Town lanes, but there is little in the way of clothes.

Luxembourg's Grand-Rue has international luxury and premium labels for a wealthy local clientele, and the high-street chains are on Avenue de la Gare. Villeroy & Boch porcelain from the factory outlet and a bottle of Moselle sparkling wine are the things to take home. Neither city has much independent design.

Both are costly, but Luxembourg is a little easier on the wallet. Free public transport, museums that charge nothing, reasonably priced wine by the glass and weekend hotel rates all help. Some visitors even sleep in Trier or Metz.

Lucerne is harder to economise in, because the mountain railways and cable cars that make the visit worthwhile add heavily to already high hotel and restaurant costs. Lakeside picnics and a Swiss travel pass soften the bill only so much.

Lucerne has the stronger classical calling card. The Lucerne Festival brings the world's leading orchestras to Jean Nouvel's lakefront hall, which is famous for its acoustics, mainly in late summer, and the hall has a year-round season of its own.

Luxembourg's Philharmonie on Kirchberg is also a fine hall with its own orchestra, and the Grand Théâtre and the Rotondes broaden the mix. Most of what plays there comes from elsewhere, though, without a festival of comparable standing.

The two are much alike: quiet cities for slowing down, without a bathing culture of their own. Luxembourg has a proper spa town half an hour away in Mondorf-les-Bains, where a mineral spring feeds pools and saunas in a park.

Lucerne's best soak is the Botta-designed mineral bath high on the Rigi, an outing by boat and cogwheel train with mountain views. An unhurried steamer ride on the lake is restful in its own right.