Matera or Tirana?

Neither city is a beach base, but Tirana's sea is the easier day out. Durrës is under an hour away by bus or car, with a long sandy strip lined with beach clubs, though it gets crowded at weekends and the water is cloudy near the port. From Matera, the pine-backed sands of Metaponto and Policoro are quieter and gentle for children, but without a car they are hard to reach.

Both kitchens are rural and plain, built on lamb, cheese, vegetables and good bread. Tirana gives you more to work through: morning byrek from corner bakeries, tavë kosi and fërgesë, farm restaurants on the hills outside town, and a slow coffee culture with raki to end the meal.

Matera's food is narrower. It is the peasant cooking of Basilicata, with crapiata, hand-made cavatelli and crackling peperoni cruschi alongside Aglianico, and little beyond it, with no street food or market life. The upper town tends to cook better than the cave restaurants of the Sassi.

Matera's lead here is wide. The Sassi have been lived in since prehistoric times, and a day among them takes you through rock churches such as Santa Maria de Idris with their faded Byzantine frescoes, furnished cave houses that families shared with their animals until the 1950s, and the Palombaro Lungo cistern beneath the main piazza. No other townscape looks like it, and it is at its finest at dusk, when the lights come on across the gorge.

Tirana's main theme is the 20th century. The Cold War story told in the Bunk'Art bunkers and the House of Leaves is what stays with you. Skanderbeg Square, the concrete Pyramid and the finely painted Et'hem Bey Mosque, a survivor of the older Ottoman town, fill out the centre. Beyond these the historic fabric is thin, and two days covers it.

Tirana wins easily. Blloku was once the closed quarter of the communist leadership. Its streets now fill with cocktail bars and small clubs after a late dinner and stay busy past midnight on summer weekends, and larger clubs near the Grand Park lake run into the early hours.

Matera has no clubs. A night out there means the passeggiata on Via del Corso, a long dinner and a drink in a cave wine bar above the Sassi, and outside summer the town is quiet soon after dinner.

The outdoors are equally good in both, but different in kind. Matera's landscape is stony and sun-baked. The Gravina gorge lies right below the Sassi, the Murgia upland holds abandoned rock churches and Neolithic sites, and the Lucanian Dolomites and Pollino are further out.

Tirana's is greener and higher. A cable car lifts you onto forested Mount Dajti in a quarter of an hour, and the turquoise Bovilla reservoir and the rafting rivers are within reach. In Matera you can set off walking from your door, while Tirana's best walking starts with a cable car or a taxi.

Matera is the better base because it sits on the Puglia border. Altamura and Gravina are minutes away. 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, and in Basilicata there are Craco and Castelmezzano.

Tirana has fewer outings, but strong ones: Kruja's castle and bazaar under an hour away, and UNESCO-listed Berat about two hours south. Slow roads make most of them full days. In both places a car makes the most difference.

Neither city is made for children, but Tirana is easier with them. The Grand Park has playgrounds and a lake, the Dajti cable car makes a ready-made outing, and children are welcome in cafés late into the evening. Heavy traffic and broken pavements make a buggy hard work, though.

In Matera, the steep stone steps of the Sassi rule out pushchairs entirely, and summer afternoons have little shade. Older children enjoy the caves and the cistern, but families usually keep the stay short.

Both are cities to explore on foot. Tirana's centre is flat and compact, with Skanderbeg Square, Blloku and the market within twenty minutes of each other, and cheap taxis cover the outskirts and the Dajti cable car.

Matera's upper town is flat too, but you reach the Sassi by steep stairways that tire the legs. The real problem is leaving town. There is no national rail line, only a slow narrow-gauge train to Bari, and buses are sparse, so a hire car is close to essential.

Matera's shops are mostly workshops in the Sassi selling the painted cuccù whistle, tufa carvings and papier-mâché, with ordinary Italian chains along Via del Corso. The best things to take home are edible: dried peppers, local pasta and a bottle of Aglianico.

Tirana gives a shopper a little more to do. The Pazari i Ri market has stalls of cheese, honey, olives and raki beside carpets, copperware and filigree silver, and there are malls and boutiques around Blloku, though no luxury street and little independent design.

Tirana is clearly the cheaper stay, among the least expensive capitals in Europe. Meals, wine, raki, taxis and museum entry barely dent a budget, and only the smarter Blloku bars cost noticeably more.

Matera costs less than Italy's big cities, but the cave hotels of the Sassi charge for their setting and rates climb in summer. A guesthouse in the newer town and meals in upper-town trattorias keep the cost reasonable.

Tirana has a real stage in the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet on Skanderbeg Square, where tickets are easy to get, and a few bars host jazz. Matera has nothing equivalent. It offers conservatory concerts, summer open-air events against the Sassi, and the Festa della Bruna, when the papier-mâché float is torn apart, as the big night of the year. Neither city has a deep scene.

Matera is the more restful of the two. Some hotel spas are set in candlelit cave rooms with pools cut into the rock, and the town's slow pace takes care of the rest: quiet early mornings in the Sassi and evenings watching the light fade over the gorge.

In Tirana, calm comes in pockets: long coffees on shaded terraces, the evening xhiro, and the Grand Park and Dajti. Traffic noise fills much of the centre. The nearest thermal water is the old-fashioned spa at Llixha, about an hour away.