Matera or Trieste?

In Trieste the sea is part of daily life. Locals climb down ladders off Barcola's concrete platforms into clear Adriatic water, and pebble coves at Sistiana and Grignano are a short ride away. Sand is almost absent, though.

Matera has the softer beaches but not the convenience. The long sandy shores at Metaponto and Policoro have shallow water that is good for small children, but they are about 45 minutes away by car. Without one, most visitors never swim.

Matera cooks the peasant food of Basilicata, and cooks it well. The horn-shaped durum loaf, crapiata, hand-made cavatelli and peperoni cruschi fried until they crackle come with Aglianico to drink. The range stops there, though. There is little beyond Lucanian dishes and no street food or market life to explore.

Trieste has the wider table, drawing on Italy, Austria and the Slavic world. Buffet counters carve boiled pork with horseradish and sauerkraut, menus run from jota and sardoni to presnitz, and the coffee has its own vocabulary. Up on the Karst, farmhouse osmize take turns opening for a few weeks at a time, selling their own Vitovska, Terrano and cured meats.

Matera edges ahead because its sights are unique. You can walk through cave homes inhabited until the 1950s, see frescoed rock churches like Santa Maria de Idris, and explore a vast cistern beneath the main piazza. The whole set is best seen at dusk from the Civita hill.

Trieste's appeal is grander and more conventional. It has a seafront square framed by Habsburg palaces, the Borgo Teresiano grid along the canal, San Giusto's mosaics, Miramare Castle and a major synagogue. It is a fine city to look at, but you can find similar Habsburg cities elsewhere in Central Europe.

Neither is a place for clubbing, but Trieste has more life after dark. Aperitivo crowds fill Cavana and the canal, students keep a few streets of wine bars and pubs going, and in summer the kiosks along Barcola stay open late. Matera offers the passeggiata, dinner and a few cave bars, and outside summer it is quiet soon after the meal.

Matera's outdoors begins at the edge of the Sassi. A path drops into the Gravina gorge and climbs to the Murgia plateau, past abandoned rock churches and Neolithic village sites, while kestrels circle the cliffs. Beyond that one landscape, the Lucanian Dolomites and the Pollino forests mean a long drive.

Trieste offers far more variety. On the Karst you can walk the Strada Napoleonica above the gulf, climb in Val Rosandra and go underground at the Škocjan Caves. The sea adds sailing and snorkelling in the Miramare marine reserve, and the Julian Alps are within reach for bigger mountain days.

Both are excellent bases, but the trips are very different. From Matera, almost everything lies in Puglia and Basilicata: Altamura, Alberobello's trulli, Ostuni, Castel del Monte and the ghost town of Craco. You need a car for nearly all of them.

From Trieste the reach crosses borders. You can see Aquileia's mosaics and star-shaped Palmanova in Friuli, then Piran, Ljubljana and Postojna in Slovenia. Venice is a long but realistic day by train.

Matera suits children old enough to scramble. For a ten-year-old, the cave houses, the walk-through cistern and the path down into the gorge feel like an adventure. Still, nothing in the town is made for children, and the uneven stone steps of the Sassi rule out a pushchair. With small children, a baby carrier, a short stay and a car for a day on the sandy Ionian shore or among the trulli make the trip workable rather than easy.

Trieste is the calmer and more practical base, though it too works best for school-age children rather than toddlers. Castles, caves and boats are where it shines, and local families spend summer days on the Barcola promenade. Its limits are the steep streets behind the waterfront, swimming from rocks and steps instead of sandy shallows, and winter days when the Bora blows.

Trieste works without a car. The flat centre is walkable, buses run along the coast and up onto the Karst, boats cross to Muggia, and the main rail line links it to Venice. Only the climb to San Giusto is tiring.

Matera is fine on foot, though the Sassi stairs are hard on the legs. Beyond the town, things get difficult: it has no main-line rail, the narrow-gauge train to Bari is slow and buses are sparse. A hire car becomes almost essential.

Matera's shops are mostly for visitors. Workshops in the Sassi sell cuccù whistles, tufa carvings and papier-mâché, and Via del Corso has ordinary high-street stores.

Trieste gives you a little more to browse, especially the antique and second-hand shops in the old-town lanes, which recall its merchant past, as well as coffee from the city's roasters. Neither is worth the journey for shopping alone. The best things to take home are edible: dried peppers and Aglianico from Matera, Karst wine and presnitz from Trieste.

Overall costs are much the same, but the money goes in different places. In Matera, meals in the upper town are cheap, and the cave hotels in the Sassi are where the expense lies. Simple guesthouses in the newer town keep a stay affordable.

In Trieste, buffet meals, coffee and buses cost little, while seafood restaurants and smarter hotels charge normal city rates. Rooms tighten around the autumn regatta.

Trieste has a real stage culture. The Teatro Verdi runs a full season of opera and ballet, operetta survives as a Habsburg legacy, and there is theatre in both Italian and Slovenian.

Matera has a conservatory, a summer jazz festival and the Festa della Bruna, but little you can count on during an ordinary week.

Neither city has thermal baths, and in both the calm comes from the pace more than from treatments. In Matera, that means a hotel spa with pools cut into candlelit rock, quiet mornings in the Sassi and evenings watching the gorge darken. Trieste offers a long sitting in a coffee house, a sunset walk on the Molo Audace and a swim off Barcola.