Marseille or Barcelona?

On the beach the two are close, but they feel different. Barcelona has one long run of sandy city beaches, from Barceloneta to Mar Bella, reached by metro or on foot and good for a swim after sightseeing. In midsummer they are crowded, with pickpockets and hawkers on the sand. The quieter sand is a short train ride away in Sitges or along the Maresme.

Marseille's city beaches at the Prado are shingle and imported sand, and locals also swim off the rocks at the Vallon des Auffes. The real attraction is the Calanques. The swimming there is far more beautiful, in clear water beneath white cliffs, but getting there by boat or on foot takes up half a day.

Barcelona is the stronger food city. Catalan cooking has a complete repertoire of its own, from suquet to calçots, and there is a whole network of covered markets beyond the Boqueria. Sant Antoni, Poble Sec and Gràcia are full of good places, from cheap workers' set lunches to some of Europe's most ambitious tasting menus.

Marseille's cooking is narrower but has more character. Bouillabaisse is a long, sit-down meal in the Corniche harbours, and everyday eating means panisses, wood-fired pizza and the North African bakeries and grocers of Noailles. In both cities, avoid the tourist menus on the main strip: the Rambla in one, the Vieux-Port quays in the other.

For sights, Barcelona is well ahead. The Modernista buildings, from the Sagrada Família to La Pedrera and the Palau de la Música, exist nowhere else, and underneath them sit the Roman walls and medieval squares of the Gothic Quarter. Add the Picasso Museum and the MNAC's Romanesque frescoes, and a week goes by easily.

Marseille is older, founded by Greek sailors, but its heritage is spread across a working city rather than gathered in one preserved centre. Notre-Dame de la Garde, the forts and MuCEM at the harbour mouth, Le Panier's Vieille Charité and Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse are each worth the trip. Seen together, though, they fill two or three days rather than a week.

Barcelona's nights are bigger and later. Dinner runs to eleven, the clubs only fill around two, and each district has its own crowd: cellar cocktail bars in the Born, scruffy bars in the Raval, outdoor drinking in Gràcia's squares and pintxos along Blai street. Serious electronic club nights keep going all year.

Marseille is about terraces and the street. You drink pastis on the Vieux-Port in the evening sun or sit at graffiti-covered bars around Cours Julien and La Plaine. Its club nights are smaller and spread across warehouses and rooftops, the scene thins out in winter, and many people take a taxi home late at night.

Marseille has the edge for nature, because it has a national park inside its own city limits. The Calanques coastal path, the inlets of Morgiou and En-Vau, world-class sport climbing and kayaking or diving around the Riou archipelago are all close to town. Sainte-Victoire and the Sainte-Baume forest are within an hour.

Barcelona's outdoors is gentler. There is the wooded Collserola park with the flat Carretera de les Aigües, the gardens of Montjuïc and watersports off Mar Bella. Montserrat's pinnacles and the Costa Brava coves are further out. Neither city is good for hiking in midsummer, and in Marseille the massifs can close on days of high fire risk.

Both are excellent bases. Marseille just edges ahead because so many famous names are so close. Aix is half an hour away, Cassis even closer, and Arles and Avignon are about an hour by train. Nîmes, the Pont du Gard and the Luberon villages fit into a long day, though the villages really need a car.

Barcelona's day trips are spread across Catalonia instead. The fast train reaches Girona's walled town in under forty minutes, and Figueres has the Dalí museum. You can also head to Tarragona's Roman amphitheatre, take a half-day at Montserrat, or visit the cava cellars of the Penedès.

Barcelona is much the easier city with children. It has a proper aquarium, the hands-on CosmoCaixa, a zoo in the Ciutadella park and a funicular up to the Tibidabo funfair, with PortAventura's theme parks an hour south. Spanish restaurants also welcome children late into the evening.

Marseille has none of those big attractions, and its museums are aimed at adults. Days there are built around the Prado beaches, Parc Borély's lake and boat trips to the Château d'If. Steep streets and heavy traffic make a pushchair harder work there than in Barcelona's old town, which is itself already cramped.

Barcelona is far simpler to move around. The centre is flat, so you can walk from the Gothic Quarter up the Eixample's grid to Gràcia in under an hour. The metro is extensive, and bike lanes cover the longer stretches. Only Park Güell, Montjuïc and Tibidabo involve a climb.

Marseille's walkable core is steep in places, and it has just two metro lines. The beaches and Calanques trailheads depend on buses that get stuck in traffic, and some coves are a long walk from the last stop. The small ferries across the port and out to Pointe Rouge help. Unlike in Barcelona, a car is genuinely useful here, though only for getting out to Provence.

Barcelona offers far more shopping. The Passeig de Gràcia has the big fashion houses among Modernista façades, and the Born, Gràcia and the Raval have independent designers, craft shops and vintage. You can take home espadrilles and ceramics.

Marseille is better for a few local things than for fashion: green cubes of olive-oil soap, santon figures from the Le Panier workshops and the fabrics and teas packed into Noailles. Rue Paradis and La Joliette cover the basics, but anyone after a long boutique afternoon will run out of streets quickly.

Overall costs are much the same, but the money goes in different places. In Barcelona the sightseeing itself is expensive: the entry fees for the Gaudí buildings and the city tourist tax add up quickly. Set lunches, tapas bars and transport passes help balance that out.

In Marseille the main attraction costs nothing, since walking in the Calanques is free, and several museums charge little. Sit-down meals cost what they normally do in France. In both cities, rooms near the seafront rise sharply in July and August.

Barcelona offers more big occasions. There is opera and ballet at the historic Liceu, concerts under the stained glass of the Palau de la Música, and early summer brings Sónar and Primavera Sound, with the Grec festival on Montjuïc's open-air stage. Most spoken theatre is in Catalan or Spanish.

Marseille's arts lean popular and Mediterranean. It has an art deco Opéra, serious drama at La Criée and a mixed programme at the Friche la Belle de Mai, a converted tobacco factory. The city has deep roots in French hip-hop, and the autumn Fiesta des Suds brings in music from around the world.

Neither city is a place to rest, and both are noisy at the centre with no bathing tradition of their own. Barcelona has a few Arab-style bath houses in the old town that visitors use. Marseille's hammams belong mostly to locals.

The quiet moments differ too. In Barcelona they are evening walks in Collserola or a terrace in a Gràcia square. In Marseille it is a long lunch at a Corniche harbour. Anyone who mainly wants to rest is better off staying in Sitges or another coastal town near Barcelona, or in Cassis or a country house near Marseille.