Matera or San Marino?

Neither is a beach town, and the difference is in the kind of shore. From Matera you drive about 45 minutes to the Ionian coast at Metaponto and Policoro, where wide sandy beaches are backed by pine woods and the sea is calm and shallow. It feels open and uncrowded, but you really need a car.

From San Marino the Adriatic is closer, about half an hour to Rimini and Riccione, and a bus can get you there. This is the organised Romagna shore of numbered umbrellas and beach clubs, convenient and good for children, with very little wild coast.

Matera gives you more to eat with real character. Its cooking is the peasant food of Basilicata: the horn-shaped pane di Matera, crapiata soup, fave e cicoria and crackling peperoni cruschi, with Aglianico to drink. The trattorias of the upper town around Via Ridola cook it well.

San Marino's Romagna dishes are honest, from passatelli and strozzapreti to piadina and Tre Monti cake. The problem is that the summit is geared to day visitors, so the better meals mean heading down to Borgo Maggiore or across the border.

Here Matera is in another league. The Sassi have been lived in since prehistoric times. Add the rock churches of Santa Maria de Idris and San Pietro Barisano, furnished cave houses and Carlo Levi's panorama at Palazzo Lanfranchi, and you have days of exploring, best of all at dusk.

San Marino's draw is the setting and the story of an ancient republic. You can climb the Guaita and Cesta towers, walk the cliffside path and see the Palazzo Pubblico and the Basilica. It is memorable, but most visitors have seen it by lunchtime.

Matera has more of an evening, though neither town gives you a real night out. After the passeggiata along Via del Corso and a long dinner, a few wine bars and cocktail bars in cave rooms stay open late in summer, and a small student crowd keeps them going. There are no clubs, and outside the warm months the town goes quiet soon after dinner.

On San Marino's summit the streets empty once the coaches leave. A drink on a terrace above the lights of the coast is about as late as the night gets. What San Marino has, and Matera lacks, is the Riviera below. The clubs and seafront bars of Rimini and Riccione are about half an hour's drive down the mountain and stay open late through summer.

Matera has wilder country on its doorstep. The Gravina gorge lies right under the Sassi, and across it the Parco della Murgia Materana offers thyme-scented upland, kestrels on the cliffs and trails past rock churches. The Lucanian Dolomites and the Pollino forests are within a day's drive.

Monte Titano gives broad views over the Romagna plain to the sea, with woodland paths down to Borgo Maggiore and quiet cycling roads in the Montefeltro. It is gentle scenery for a morning, not a walking destination.

Both make strong bases, and Matera has a slight edge in variety. Within about an hour you reach the trulli of Alberobello, the white towns of the Valle d'Itria, Castel del Monte and Polignano a Mare. Closer to home are Craco and the mountain villages of Castelmezzano and Pietrapertosa.

San Marino's outings lean more towards art. San Leo's fortress, Renaissance Urbino and the mosaics of Ravenna are all within reach. Rimini's Roman sights are just below, and Ravenna and Bologna can be reached by train from the coast, which is more than Matera manages for most of its trips.

San Marino is clearly the better bet with children. The cable car, towers and battlements please them on the mountain, and the coast below adds Fiabilandia, waterparks, a marine park and shallow beaches, all within easy reach.

Older children enjoy Matera's caves, the underground cistern and scrambling into the gorge. Still, the town has nothing built for them, and its long staircases make a pushchair useless. It works best as a short stop with a baby carrier.

On foot the two are similar: compact, car-free cores, but with steep steps everywhere. Matera's upper town is at least flat. San Marino has a cable car linking the summit and Borgo Maggiore. Arriving without a car is slightly simpler in San Marino, where a bus meets Italian trains at Rimini. Matera relies on a slow narrow-gauge line to Bari, and in both places you will want a hire car to explore.

Neither is worth the trip for shopping, and they differ mainly in what they sell. Matera's buys are craft souvenirs, such as the painted cuccù whistle and tufa carvings, plus dried peppers and pasta to take home. San Marino trades on lower taxes, with perfume, watches, leather and spirits, an outlet centre in the valley, and stamps and coins for collectors.

Overall costs are much the same, and in both places it pays to sleep just off the showpiece. In Matera, the cave hotels of the Sassi cost more, while guesthouses in the newer town are cheaper and close by. San Marino's summit hotels and view terraces carry a premium over the lower villages, though lower taxes make fuel and spirits cheaper there.

Both are quiet for performance, and Matera has a little more going on. The conservatory gives concerts, a summer jazz festival plays against the backdrop of the Sassi, and the Festa della Bruna, with its float torn to pieces, is a remarkable night. San Marino's highlight is the costumed Medieval Days festival with its crossbow contests. For opera or a concert season you would go to Bologna or Pesaro.

Matera's cave spas make it the more memorable place to unwind. Hotel spas set in candlelit rock rooms, with pools cut into the stone, feel like nowhere else. The town's slow rhythm of quiet mornings in the Sassi, long lunches and dusk over the gorge adds to the calm. Neither town has thermal baths or a bathing tradition of its own.

San Marino offers a few ordinary hotel spas, and its quiet comes in the evenings on the walls, once the summer crowds around the towers have gone. For proper thermal spas you need a separate trip down to the coast or into the Apennine valleys.