Monaco or Siena?

Monaco has the sea on its doorstep, even if it has little sand. Larvotto is a short, groomed beach behind breakwaters with clear, calm water, and private beach clubs, rocky platforms and the coves of Cap d'Ail add more places to swim. Menton and Nice are a short train ride away for longer beaches.

Siena has no swimming beyond a hotel or farmhouse pool. The Maremma beaches near Castiglione della Pescaia are a full day's outing by car, so beach lovers would have to move to the coast for a few nights.

The two eat about equally well, but in very different ways. Monaco is about starred and grand hotel dining rooms cooking Riviera and Ligurian food, with barbagiuan and socca from the Condamine market as the local bites. Casual meals are scarce, and many visitors eat more freely in Nice or Menton.

Siena is about family osterie in the contrade serving pici, ribollita and cinta senese pork, old pastry shops selling panforte and ricciarelli, and Chianti Classico and Brunello by the glass. It has little fine dining and almost no international food.

Siena is in another league here. Its whole medieval centre is UNESCO-listed, and the Palazzo Pubblico's Good and Bad Government frescoes, the Duomo's inlaid floor and Piccolomini Library, Duccio's Maestà and Santa Maria della Scala add up to several days of serious looking. The contrade, each with its own fountain and flag, keep the streets alive with tradition.

Monaco's sights are fewer and more about setting: the Prince's Palace and its guard ceremony, the cathedral with Grace Kelly's tomb, the Belle Époque Oceanographic Museum and the Casino. They make a pleasant day or two rather than an art pilgrimage.

Monaco offers more of a night out, though it is a dressy one. The hotel bars around the Casino square and the glossy clubs along the Larvotto seafront and the port come alive in summer and on Grand Prix weekend, when the harbour becomes one long party.

Siena's evenings are a long dinner, a glass of wine on the Campo and a stroll, with a few student pubs and almost no clubs. Only the Palio nights, with outdoor contrada dinners, keep the streets busy late.

Both have fine scenery close by, but of a different kind. Around Monaco, limestone mountains drop straight into the sea. You can walk the old mule path up to Èze, take in the view from the Tête de Chien or follow the shore paths around Cap Martin, and the clear water is good for diving, snorkelling and paddleboarding.

Siena's outdoors is gentle, rolling farmland: the bare clay hills of the Crete Senesi, the Val d'Orcia and the white gravel strade bianche that draw road and gravel cyclists. There is no coast and no high mountain country, only the Montagnola woods and Monte Amiata further off.

Both are excellent bases, and Siena has even more within reach. San Gimignano, Monteriggioni, the Chianti villages, Volterra, Pienza, Montalcino, Montepulciano and the abbeys of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, Sant'Antimo and San Galgano all lie close, with Florence a fast bus ride away. The catch is that most of the hill towns and wineries really need a car.

Monaco's outings are easier without a car. The coastal train reaches Villefranche, Nice and Menton in minutes, a bus climbs to Èze, and Antibes, Cannes, Grasse and the Italian towns of Sanremo and Dolceacqua are all within reach by train or bus.

Monaco works better with children, at least for a few days. The aquarium with its sharks and turtles, Larvotto's gentle water, the small animal garden, the palace guards and the yachts give children plenty to see, and lifts take care of much of the climbing.

Siena is safe and welcoming in its trattorias but has no attractions made for children, and its steep lanes are hard work with a pushchair. Older children enjoy climbing the Torre del Mangia and the contrada drummers. Most families do better staying at a farmhouse with a pool and coming into town for half days.

Monaco is the easier of the two to get around. The principality is only about 3km end to end, free public lifts and escalators link its levels, buses and a little solar ferry cover the rest, and the station puts the whole coast within easy reach by train.

Siena's centre is just as walkable and largely free of cars, but its three ridges mean steep, stepped lanes, and regional trains are slow and infrequent. Getting out to the countryside generally means hiring a car and leaving it outside the walls.

Monaco has more to shop for, but almost all of it is at the top end. The Carré d'Or around the Casino gardens packs the big fashion houses, jewellers and watchmakers into a few streets, with a mall below for mainstream labels. Anyone looking for ordinary prices or variety goes to Nice.

Siena's shopping is modest and local: Italian shoes and leather on Banchi di Sopra, hand-painted majolica, contrada scarves, and panforte, pecorino and wine to take home, plus the big weekly market by the Fortezza Medicea.

Siena is far easier on the wallet. Rooms inside the walls are in demand around the Palio and in summer, and museum tickets add up, but osteria meals with house wine are good value and an agriturismo outside town costs less again.

Monaco is one of the most expensive places in the world to visit, from hotels to a café coffee. Apart from free things like the lifts and walks on the Rock, most budget visitors stay across the French border and come in for the day.

Monaco has a much bigger stage than its size suggests. The Monte-Carlo Opera in the gilded Salle Garnier, the Philharmonic and Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo all perform at an international level, mostly from winter to spring, and summer brings open-air concerts by the sea.

Siena's musical life is real but provincial. The Accademia Chigiana's summer concerts in palaces and churches, Siena Jazz and the winter programme at the Teatro dei Rinnovati and Teatro dei Rozzi are its highlights, and opera means a trip to Florence.

Monaco keeps its pampering in town, in heated seawater and hotel spas, while Siena's lies out in the hills in natural hot springs. In Monaco that means the large thalassotherapy centre beside the Casino and the spas of the grand hotels, with a slow morning in the Japanese Garden for calm, as long as you avoid Grand Prix week.

Around Siena you drive out to the water itself. The travertine pools of Rapolano Terme are about half an hour away. Bagno Vignoni has its steaming medieval bath, and Bagni San Filippo has free white limestone pools in the woods, so a day there is a soak in the countryside rather than a booked treatment.