Milan or Nice?

Milan has no beach of its own. In summer the choice is the Idroscalo basin near Linate, an open-air pool, or a train out to the pebbly lidos of Lake Como and Lake Maggiore, which takes about an hour each way. You can swim on a Milan trip, but only as a planned outing.

In Nice the sea sits at the end of almost every street. The 7km pebble shore below the promenade has clear water and alternates public stretches with private clubs that rent loungers. If you prefer sand, try Beaulieu and Paloma to the east or Antibes and Juan-les-Pins to the west.

Milan is the richer place to eat. Saffron risotto, ossobuco and cotoletta come cooked in butter in the northern style. Because the city draws people from all over Italy, you can also eat Neapolitan pizza or Sicilian pastry close to how they are made at home. Add a strong fine-dining tier and the old pasticcerie, and you could eat for a week without repeating a style.

Nice eats more simply and closer to the street. You get socca hot from the wood oven, pissaladière, stuffed vegetables and pan bagnat, the Cours Saleya market in the mornings and the local Bellet wine. It rewards anyone happy with family places in Vieux Nice, but the range is narrower and the seafront terraces are best avoided.

Milan's sights are fewer but of greater weight. Leonardo's Last Supper, the marble Duomo with its walkable roof, the paintings of the Pinacoteca di Brera and Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà in the Castello Sforzesco are each worth the journey. They stand in clusters within a mostly modern, businesslike city.

Nice offers more atmosphere than masterpieces. You get the ochre lanes and baroque chapels of Vieux Nice, Belle Époque villas in Cimiez and the Russian cathedral's onion domes. Its strength is modern art, at the Matisse and Chagall museums and MAMAC, which fill two or three pleasant days.

Milan has the fuller night out. Aperitivo along the Navigli runs on into late bars on the towpaths. Brera is the polished option, and Porta Venezia mixes a relaxed crowd with the city's gay scene. Clubs range from dressy Corso Como venues with strict doors to warehouse parties on the edges. The one gap is August, when much of the city leaves.

Nice is at its liveliest in exactly those summer months, but even then it is a night of pubs and wine bars in the old town lanes and drinks at the port. Clubs are thin on the ground, and anyone after a glossier night usually heads to Monaco or Cannes.

Nice wins on the outdoors because the Alps run down to the sea right beside it. You can walk up Castle Hill or Mont Boron from the centre, follow the shore paths around Cap Ferrat, cycle the corniches, or go diving and paddleboarding off the bay. The Mercantour's high lakes and the ski slopes of Isola 2000 are within a couple of hours.

Milan itself lies on a flat, hazy plain, with Parco Sempione and the canal towpaths as its green spaces. The real scenery starts about an hour north, where the lakes and the Grigne ridges offer good hiking and via ferrata, but every outing begins with a train.

Both are superb bases, and the difference is what kind of place you reach. From Milan the high-speed lines take you to whole cities: Verona's arena, Turin's Egyptian Museum, Bologna, and Bergamo's walled upper town. Lake Como, the Certosa di Pavia and the Borromean Islands add lakes and monasteries.

From Nice the outings are shorter hops along one coast: Villefranche, Monaco, Menton, the perched village of Èze, Antibes and Cannes. Grasse and Saint-Paul-de-Vence lie inland, and Italy is next door at Sanremo. Most are under an hour away and none needs a car.

Milan keeps children busy indoors and on day trips, while Nice keeps them outdoors. In Milan the science and technology museum, with its submarine, trains and hands-on labs, saves a wet day, and the small aquarium sits by the playgrounds of Parco Sempione. For older children, the theme parks of Leolandia and Gardaland are within easy reach. Most of the big sights in the city are made for adults, though.

Nice is a gentler place for younger children. The flat promenade suits pushchairs and bikes. Children splash in the water jets of the Promenade du Paillon, and there are play areas by the waterfall on Castle Hill and small animals at Parc Phoenix. The pebbles are hard on small feet, though, and there is no theme park nearby.

Milan is a city you cross by metro and tram, while you can walk across central Nice in half an hour. Milan's five colour-coded metro lines and dense tram network, still running some old orange cars, reach everywhere you need, and trains from three stations go straight to the lakes. The weak points are the stuffy platforms in summer and the long transfer from Malpensa.

Nice needs much less transport. The old town, Place Massena, the port and the promenade are all within walking distance, and one tram line links the airport to the centre. You only need buses for the climb to Cimiez, and the coastal trains for outings, which get crowded in summer.

Milan is one of the world's fashion capitals and a reason to travel in itself. The Quadrilatero della Moda holds the great Italian houses on their home ground, and the Galleria and La Rinascente sit by the Duomo. Corso Buenos Aires covers the everyday, and Brera and Porta Ticinese have independents and vintage. Furniture and lighting showrooms make design a second strength.

Nice is for pleasant browsing rather than a shopping trip. Avenue Jean Médecin has the chains, and rue Paradis has a few luxury names. The best buys are Provençal: olive oil, soaps and candied fruit in Vieux Nice, and Monday's antiques on the Cours Saleya.

In Milan, the trade fairs and fashion weeks drive hotel prices. In Nice, the summer sun does. Milan's rooms are dear all year, and they become very hard to find at a fair price when a big fair is on. Aperitivo with snacks in place of supper, and the lunch menus aimed at office workers, keep food costs reasonable, and staying near a metro stop outside the centre helps.

Nice is easier to plan around because its peak is predictable. Rooms by the sea climb from June to September and beach loungers add up, while spring and late autumn are noticeably easier on the budget. The cheap trams and coastal trains, many low-cost city museums and socca from the old town stalls help at any time of year.

Milan has one of the world's great opera houses in La Scala, whose season opens each December on the feast of Sant'Ambrogio. Gallery seats make it reachable for a visitor willing to plan. The Piccolo Teatro, a fine symphony orchestra and jazz rooms fill out the calendar, though it quietens in summer.

Nice's offering is regional but has its own highlights. The red-and-gold Opéra de Nice stages opera and ballet, the Nice Jazz Festival brings big names in July, and the Carnival parades fill February. Outside those dates you can count on an evening or two, not a week of performances.

Neither city is a place people come to slow down, but each gives you a different kind of rest. Milan's comes in set pieces. There is a thermal spa complex with outdoor pools and saunas in the south of the centre, and in summer an afternoon at the restored 1930s pools of the Bagni Misteriosi. For real quiet, though, you take the train to the lakes.

Nice has no bathing culture of its own beyond hotel treatment rooms and the thalassotherapy centres along the coast. What it has is a slower daily rhythm: an early swim, a long lunch and a walk by the bay as the light fades. Outside the busy summer heat, it is the calmer of the two.