Lucerne or Pisa?

Pisa has the real coast. Long, wide sandy beaches at Tirrenia and Calambrone are backed by pine woods, and the shallow water is warm in midsummer and easy for paddling. The sea near the Arno mouth is rarely clear, and the Versilia beaches are a short train ride further north.

Lucerne has no sea, and its swimming is on the lake. People bathe from the Lido, the old wooden lake baths and the grassy shore at Ufschötti, in clean water with mountains behind. It is a lovely break on a hot afternoon, but the season is short and there is no sand.

Neither city is a place to travel to for serious dining, but Pisa eats better. Around the morning market at Piazza delle Vettovaglie, trattorias serve ribollita, wild boar and hot cecina from wood ovens, and the student custom keeps them honest.

Lucerne's food is hearty Swiss cooking in wood-panelled guild houses: Chügelipastete, fondue, rösti and perch from the lake. The quality is good, but the choice is narrower, many places around the Chapel Bridge cater to coach tours, and every meal costs a lot more.

Pisa has the more important set piece. The cathedral, baptistery, Leaning Tower and Camposanto stand together on one marble-and-lawn square, and beyond it lie Piazza dei Cavalieri, Santa Maria della Spina and the medieval painting in San Matteo.

Lucerne's sights are fewer and more picturesque than grand: the covered Chapel Bridge, the towers of the Musegg Wall and the carved Lion Monument. The Rosengart Collection adds strong Picasso and Klee. Each city can be covered in a day or two.

Both cities go to bed early, but Pisa has more life after dinner. During term, students fill the small squares around the old market with outdoor drinking until past midnight, and in summer the evenings move to the beach bars on the coast.

Lucerne offers riverside wine bars and a few cocktail bars in the Neustadt, and the lakefront is mostly empty by midnight. The exception is Fasnacht, when the whole town stays out in costume until dawn.

This is where Lucerne is far ahead, and its setting is the main reason to go. The city sits on a branching lake ringed by peaks. Pilatus and Rigi rise straight from the shore, and the glacier on Titlis is about an hour away, so boat, rail and hiking fit easily into one day. Winter adds skiing.

Pisa's outdoors is flatter and gentler. The San Rossore park has pine forest, dunes and fallow deer to explore by bike or on horseback, and there are olive-terrace walks on the Monte Pisano. For real mountains, you have to travel to the Apuan Alps or the Cinque Terre.

Pisa puts much more within easy reach. Florence, Lucca and the Cinque Terre are all an hour or so away by train, while Lucerne's outings stay mostly within Switzerland and around its own lake. From Lucerne, Bern, Basel and Zurich are each under an hour by train. Steamers run to the Rütli meadow and the William Tell country around Altdorf, and a scenic line over the Brünig Pass leads to Interlaken.

From Pisa, walled Lucca takes under half an hour and Florence's Uffizi and Duomo about an hour, and you are still back for dinner. The marble towns of Pietrasanta and Carrara are along the coast. With a car, Volterra and San Gimignano are about an hour away and Siena and Chianti under two, so much of Tuscany and the Ligurian coast is in range.

Lucerne has more for children to do. The Swiss Museum of Transport, with its trains, planes and planetarium, easily fills a day, and the Glacier Garden, the Goldau wildlife park and the steamer and cogwheel rides add more. These outings cost a lot, though, and rainy days can run short of ideas.

Pisa's appeal for families is simpler. Children can run on the tower lawn, splash in the shallows at Tirrenia and Calambrone, or cycle in San Rossore. Younger children are not allowed up the tower, and the midsummer heat needs planning around.

Lucerne's advantage is that everything starts in one place. The station, the boat piers and the Old Town sit side by side on the lakefront, and most sights are a short, flat walk along the river. Lake steamers and trains connect with the cogwheel railways and cable cars into the mountains, so even the peaks need no car. Linking boat, rail and cable car in one day does take some reading of the connections.

Pisa is also easy on foot but more spread out. The walk from the station to the cathedral square takes about half an hour, and the buses to the tower and the beaches are slow. On the other hand, the airport is unusually close and linked to the station by a shuttle train, and bikes suit the flat streets and the park roads.

Lucerne has the more distinctive offer, almost entirely in Swiss watches, jewellery, army knives and chocolate along Schwanenplatz and the lakefront. Beyond those, fashion and design shops are scarce.

Pisa's shopping is everyday Italian: chains and mid-range fashion on Corso Italia, smarter shoes and old pastry shops under the arcades of Borgo Stretto, and a monthly antiques market by the river. For anything serious, people take the train to Florence.

The cost gap is the widest difference between the two. Lucerne is expensive at every step, from central hotel rooms to plain restaurant meals, and the mountain railways and cable cars are a big part of the bill. Supermarket picnics by the lake help, but only a little.

Pisa is moderately priced for a famous Italian city. Rooms are mid-range, the student trattorias are good value and walking costs nothing. The main extra costs are the tower climb and the beach loungers in high summer.

For classical music, Lucerne is in another league. The Lucerne Festival brings leading orchestras and soloists to a lakefront hall famous for its acoustics, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra plays there all year, and the city theatre stages opera and dance.

Pisa's stage is the horseshoe-shaped Teatro Verdi, where you can see Italian opera, ballet and concerts from autumn to spring in an unpretentious historic house. Apart from university chamber series and church recitals, there is little else, and bigger productions mean a trip to Florence.

The two are about level for rest, but the kind differs. Pisa has thermal water nearby: San Giuliano Terme, used since Roman times, has a spa in its 18th-century bath palace, and Casciana Terme has a larger public pool.

Lucerne has no hot springs of its own. Its calm comes from lakeside promenades and slow steamer afternoons, and the place for a soak is the Botta-designed mineral bath high on the Rigi.