Matera or Verona?

Neither city has its own shore, and from either one a swim is a half-day outing. Matera's choice is the Ionian sea at Metaponto and Policoro, about three quarters of an hour by car. The beaches there are broad and sandy, backed by pine woods, with shallow water that small children can paddle in.

Verona's swimming is in a lake: the southern shore of Lake Garda, half an hour by car or train to Peschiera. There you get lidos, grassy lawns, small pebble beaches and the flat limestone shelves at Sirmione. It is easier to reach without a car, but the shore is narrower and crowded on summer weekends.

Both cities cook from the land rather than the sea, but Verona's table is richer and its wine is far better known. Risotto made with Amarone, bigoli with duck and bollito with pearà are served in the osterie around Piazza delle Erbe and in Veronetta. Valpolicella, Soave and Bardolino are poured at counters all over the centre.

Matera's cooking is plainer and has a smaller range: crusty pane di Matera, fave e cicoria, crapiata, cavatelli and crackling peperoni cruschi, with Aglianico to drink. It is honest food and best eaten in the upper town, but after a few days you will have tried most of it.

Matera is one extraordinary sight, while Verona is a whole city built up over many periods. In Matera the cave houses of the Sassi, the frescoed rock churches such as Santa Maria de Idris and the Palombaro Lungo, a cistern you can walk through, are found nowhere else. They look their best when the lights come on across the ravine.

Verona has more depth and variety: the Arena and the Roman theatre, the Scaliger tombs, the bronze doors of San Zeno and the Castelvecchio museum in its Scarpa setting. It is slightly ahead for anyone who wants buildings and art from several eras. Matera is the stranger and more memorable place.

Neither is a city for a big night out, but Verona's evenings go on longer. The aperitivo crowd fills Piazza delle Erbe and the lanes by the river, the student bars in Veronetta stay busy late during term, and in summer the opera audience brings people back onto the streets near midnight.

Matera's evening is the passeggiata along Via del Corso, a long dinner and a glass of wine on a terrace above the lit Sassi. That is lovely for a couple, but the town goes quiet soon after.

Both have real landscape close by, but of very different kinds. Matera's is wild and stony. The Gravina gorge lies right below the Sassi, and on the Murgia plateau opposite, trails lead past abandoned rock churches and Neolithic village sites. The jagged Lucanian Dolomites are further out.

Verona's countryside is greener and better suited to sport. You can walk and cycle among the Valpolicella vineyards, follow the Adige cycle route, hike in the beech woods of the Lessinia, or head to Monte Baldo and the windsurfing waters at the north end of Lake Garda. Choose Matera for rugged scenery you can walk to from town, and Verona for outdoor activity.

Matera's outings are mostly small towns and stony landscape, and nearly all of them start with a hire car. Altamura and its bread are twenty minutes away, and within about an hour you reach the trulli of Alberobello, Ostuni and the other white towns of the Valle d'Itria, Castel del Monte and Polignano a Mare on its sea cliffs. Basilicata adds outings of its own: the abandoned hill town of Craco, the Greek temple of Hera at Metaponto, and Castelmezzano and Pietrapertosa among the jagged Lucanian peaks.

Verona has more days out, more variety among them, and most of them can be done by train. Within an hour you can see Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel in Padua or Palladio's Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, or walk the streets of Gonzaga Mantua among its lakes, and Venice is close enough for a full day. Add Sirmione's castle and Roman villa on Garda and the cellars of Valpolicella and Soave, and you could fill a week of outings without repeating yourself.

Verona is clearly the better choice with children. Gardaland, the water parks around the southern shore of Lake Garda and the drive-through safari at Parco Natura Viva give a family several full days out, and the Arena tends to grab a child's imagination.

Matera works for older children, who enjoy the caves, the underground cistern and scrambling down into the gorge. For small ones, the uneven steps of the Sassi and hot summer afternoons with little shade make it tiring, and nothing in the town is designed with children in mind.

Matera's upper town is flat, but you reach the Sassi below it by steep stairways and lanes that tire the legs, and cars cannot enter most of the old districts. Going further is slow. The town is off the national rail network, a narrow-gauge line crawls to Bari and buses are sparse, so beyond the town a hire car does most of the work.

Verona is easier both in town and beyond it. The centre inside the loop of the Adige is level and largely closed to traffic, so the Arena, Castelvecchio and Veronetta are only minutes apart on foot. From Porta Nuova station the main line runs to Venice, Milan and Peschiera. Only the Valpolicella villages and the Lessinia really need a car.

Verona has a proper shopping street and Matera does not. Via Mazzini, paved in marble, is lined with Italian fashion labels, and Corso Porta Borsari adds jewellers and shoe shops. The style is smart but provincial.

Matera mostly sells crafts to visitors: cuccù whistles, carvings in tufa stone and ceramics in the Sassi, plus ordinary high-street shops on Via del Corso. In both cities the best things to take home are food and drink, dried peppers and Aglianico from one, Amarone and pandoro from the other.

Matera is the cheaper of the two, mostly for meals and for rooms outside the old districts. Its upper-town trattorias cost less than places in the big cities. The cave hotels in the Sassi are the exception, and they are priced as the speciality they are.

In Verona, the main cost is a room in the historic centre: expensive for a provincial city and hard to find on opera nights and during trade fairs. Wine counters and the osterie in Veronetta keep eating out reasonable, and staying across the river helps with the rest.

This is one of the widest gaps between the two. Verona has its summer opera season in the Roman Arena, with grand productions of Verdi and Puccini performed to crowds on the ancient stone tiers by candlelight. Through the cooler months there is a season at the Teatro Filarmonico, and in summer Shakespeare and jazz in the Roman theatre.

Matera has conservatory concerts, a summer jazz festival and the Festa della Bruna, the patron feast that ends with the papier-mâché float being torn apart. Beyond that, there is little to see on stage.

Verona is ahead because thermal water is within easy reach. There are Sirmione's spa pools looking over Lake Garda, a warm spring-fed lake in an old villa garden near Lazise, and the springs at Caldiero, used since Roman times.

Matera has no bathing tradition of its own, but some of its hotel spas have pools cut into candlelit cave rooms, which is an unusual setting. Much of its calm comes from the empty Sassi in the early morning and from the quieter months between autumn and spring.