Matera or Sarajevo?

Neither is a beach city, but Matera at least has the sea within a day's reach. The Ionian shore around Metaponto and Policoro is under an hour by car, with wide sand, pine woods and calm, shallow water that suits children.

Sarajevo is about three hours from the Adriatic, so swimming there means a cold mountain river, the Jablanica lake on the road south, or a pool. If you want the sea on a Bosnian trip, add a few days on the Croatian or Montenegrin coast.

Both cities cook hearty regional food with little range beyond it, but Sarajevo's is the more distinctive to eat your way through. Ćevapi in somun with kajmak, burek sold by weight and lamb cooked under a metal lid, followed by Bosnian coffee from a copper džezva with baklava, give each day a rhythm.

Matera's Basilicata peasant cooking is honest and good, built on its horn-shaped durum loaf, cavatelli, crapiata and crackling peperoni cruschi. It has none of Sarajevo's street food, though, and the better tables are in the upper town rather than the cave restaurants of the Sassi.

Matera has the edge, because nothing in Sarajevo, or anywhere else, looks like the Sassi. Sarajevo shows several worlds meeting, while Matera shows a single way of life carried on in the same rock since prehistory: cave houses still furnished as families left them in the 1950s, and rock churches with frescoes faded almost to shadows. The whole town is the sight, and it looks its best at dusk when the lights come on across the gorge.

Sarajevo rewards an interest in history more than a love of beautiful scenery. Within a short walk the Ottoman mosque and bazaar give way to Habsburg avenues, churches of two Christian traditions and a synagogue. The corner by the Latin Bridge, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot, and the Tunnel of Hope from the siege bring the twentieth century close, so a day of sightseeing here is more sobering than picturesque.

Of the two, Sarajevo is where you can actually go out. Café-bars fill from the afternoon and get louder after dark, cellar bars and small clubs keep going past midnight at weekends, and drinks are cheap, though many nights end over rakija rather than on a dancefloor.

Matera has no clubs at all. Its evening is the passeggiata along Via del Corso, a long dinner and a few cave wine bars in summer, and outside the warm months the town falls quiet soon after dinner.

Sarajevo has real mountains at its edge. A cable car climbs from the Old Town to Trebević and the overgrown Olympic bobsleigh track, Jahorina and Bjelašnica give winter skiing and summer ridge walks under an hour away, and the shepherds' village of Lukomir sits high above the Rakitnica canyon.

Matera's outdoors is drier and smaller in scale: the path down into the Gravina gorge and up to Murgia Timone, past abandoned rock churches and Neolithic sites. The Lucanian Dolomites and Pollino lie further out. It makes for fine walking in spring or autumn rather than a mountain vacation.

Matera is the better base because it sits where two regions meet. Altamura and Gravina in Puglia are close by. Within about an hour you reach the trulli of Alberobello, the white towns of the Valle d'Itria, Castel del Monte and Bari, and on the Basilicata side there are Craco and the temple at Metaponto. You need a car for nearly all of them.

From Sarajevo the one outstanding outing is Mostar, reached by a scenic train through the Neretva gorge, with Konjic and its old stone bridge on the way. Blagaj's dervish house and the fortress village of Počitelj lie beyond Mostar and pair well with it if you go by car or tour. Travnik and the bridge at Višegrad are worth the drive, but slow, winding roads mean fewer trips fit into a stay.

Neither city is built around children, but Sarajevo is a little easier. The Old Town is flat, and the Trebević cable car, carriage rides to the streams of Vrelo Bosne, the small zoo and gentle winter skiing fill a few days, though grill smoke and winter smog bother small lungs.

In Matera the Sassi are all steep stone steps where a pushchair is useless, and summer afternoons are hot with little shade. Older children enjoy the caves and the cistern, and the shallow Ionian beaches are a real plus for families with a car.

Sarajevo is simpler to manage without a car. The compact centre is easy on foot, and a tram runs along the valley floor from Baščaršija out to Ilidža, backed by buses, trolleybuses and cheap taxis. The airport, the Tunnel of Hope and the ski mountains still call for a taxi or tour.

Matera's centre is walkable too, but the Sassi are reached by steep stairways, and the town is off the national rail network. With only a slow narrow-gauge line to Bari and sparse buses, most visitors hire a car for the coast and the countryside.

Sarajevo has the more absorbing place to browse: Kazandžiluk, where coppersmiths still hammer coffee sets by hand, and the Bezistan with its kilims, leather slippers and filigree, though much of it is souvenir stock. Matera's offer is small, mostly cuccù whistles, tufa carvings and ceramics in the Sassi, and its best buys are edible: dried peppers, local pasta and Aglianico.

Sarajevo is the much cheaper stay. Meals, coffee, trams, taxis, museum entry and central hotels all sit well below Western European levels, rising only a little in the Old Town and during the summer film festival.

Matera is good value for Italy, with modest trattorias in the upper town and free walks through the Sassi and the Murgia. Its cave hotels are a priced speciality, though, and the car most visitors need adds to the bill.

Live performance is the thinnest part of a Matera trip. Beyond conservatory concerts and open-air summer events against the backdrop of the Sassi, the one big night is the Festa della Bruna, when the procession ends with the papier-mâché float being torn apart.

In Sarajevo there is a modest season all year. The Austro-Hungarian National Theatre stages drama, opera and ballet, and the Philharmonic gives concerts. The MESS theatre festival comes in autumn and a jazz festival in November. Sevdah, the slow Bosnian love songs, can be heard in traditional restaurants, though most plays are in the local language.

Calm in Matera comes mostly from its pace: quiet mornings in the Sassi, long lunches and the light fading over the gorge, best in the quieter months from autumn to spring. There are no thermal waters, but hotel spas in candlelit caves with rock-cut pools are an unusual place to unwind.

For an actual bathing tradition, take the tram to Ilidža at the end of the line in Sarajevo. Its sulphurous springs have been used since Roman times, and a spa there offers warm pools and treatments. The shaded avenue of Vrelo Bosne is close by, though winter smog in the valley takes away some of the calm.