Munich or Nuremberg?

Neither city is a swimming destination, but Munich makes a summer swim easier. The Isar's gravel banks at the Flaucher are in town, and the Starnberger See and Ammersee are an S-Bahn ride away, with jetties, lawns and clear, fresh alpine water.

From Nuremberg, the nearest open water is the Franconian Lake District, a chain of reservoirs around the Brombachsee about an hour south with a few small sandy strips. In the city itself, swimming means outdoor pools.

Both cities cook pork and pour beer, but Munich offers more range. It has the brewery beer halls, beer gardens under chestnut trees and the Viktualienmarkt. There is also a respectable tier of starred restaurants, plus good Italian, Turkish and Balkan cooking.

Nuremberg is for beer drinkers who want variety from small breweries, with Franconian lagers and smoky Kellerbier in the taverns. Its finger-sized bratwurst grilled over beechwood and its Lebkuchen are true local specialities. Away from the taverns, though, dining is fairly ordinary.

Munich's strength is its royal collections. The old masters of the Alte Pinakothek lead the Kunstareal, and the Residenz, Nymphenburg Palace and the vast Deutsches Museum add more. Nuremberg cannot match that depth of museums.

Nuremberg's appeal is its setting: a walled old town under the Kaiserburg, with Gothic churches, Dürer's house and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Its twentieth-century sites, the Rally Grounds and Courtroom 600, make a serious companion to the Dachau memorial outside Munich.

Munich gives more choice after dark. Cocktail and gay bars cluster around Gärtnerplatz and the Glockenbachviertel, Schwabing has student pubs, and a handful of techno and house clubs stay open until morning at weekends. From late September the Oktoberfest tents on the Theresienwiese take over for just over two weeks.

Nuremberg's evenings are quieter and mostly spent in bars. There are taverns and wine bars in the old town, while Gostenhof has small alternative bars that make a more interesting night out. There is little serious clubbing.

Here the gap is wide. From Munich the Alps are about an hour away by train, with the Zugspitze, Tegernsee and the Wetterstein for summer hiking and winter skiing. In town there is the huge English Garden, with surfers riding the standing wave on the Eisbach.

Nuremberg has no mountains. Its outdoors means the Reichswald pine forest at the edge of the city and the wooded valleys and limestone towers of Franconian Switzerland. These are good for walkers, cyclists and rock climbers, but nothing on an alpine scale.

Both are excellent bases, with Munich slightly ahead for range. Its day trips cross a border and change landscape: Salzburg and Innsbruck in Austria, the royal castles of Neuschwanstein and Herrenchiemsee, and Augsburg half an hour away.

Nuremberg's list is all old towns and wine country: Bamberg, Würzburg, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and Bayreuth for Wagner. Regensburg is easy from either city. The two cities are about an hour apart by fast train, so one trip can cover both.

Munich is easier for a longer family trip. It has the Hellabrunn zoo along the Isar, the Deutsches Museum's hands-on sections, the Sea Life aquarium, beer gardens with playgrounds and lake beaches in summer. Legoland Deutschland is about an hour and a half away by car.

Nuremberg draws on its toy-making past, with the Toy Museum, full-size locomotives at the railway museum and a zoo in old quarries with a dolphin house. That is plenty for a few days, but the cobbled climb to the castle is hard work with a pushchair.

Both cities run the U-Bahn, S-Bahn, trams and buses on one ticket system, and neither needs a car. Munich's network is larger and reaches the lakes, the Olympic Park and the airport. Its flat riverside routes make it a good city for cycling, though the central S-Bahn line is prone to delays.

Nuremberg is smaller. Almost everything sits inside walls about 1.5km across, so most visitors walk and only need transport for the zoo, the Rally Grounds and Fürth.

Munich is the shopping city of the two. Maximilianstrasse has the luxury houses, Neuhauser Strasse and Kaufingerstrasse have the department stores, and Glockenbach and Schwabing have independent boutiques. Specialist tailors sell proper Tracht, the dirndls and lederhosen of Bavarian costume.

In Nuremberg people mostly buy souvenirs rather than fashion: Lebkuchen in decorated tins, wooden toys and crafts from the Handwerkerhof. In Advent the Christkindlesmarkt is one of Germany's most famous Christmas markets, but outside that season the shopping streets are ordinary.

Munich is the costlier stay, and hotels are where you notice it. Rooms are dear all year and climb further during the Oktoberfest and the big trade fairs. The free pleasures are real, from the English Garden and the Isar banks to the lakes, and beer gardens still let you bring your own picnic, while several museums charge only a token fee on Sundays. They take the edge off a day's spending, but they cannot make up for the cost of a bed.

Nuremberg goes noticeably further, and the saving runs through the whole day rather than only the room. A plate of bratwurst in an old-town tavern is filling and cheap, most sights are modestly priced, and with nearly everything inside the walls many visitors hardly need a transport ticket. Its expensive weeks are the trade fairs, above all the world's biggest toy fair, and the Christkindlesmarkt season. Outside those dates, the stay itself is fairly priced.

Munich is one of Europe's great music cities, and Nuremberg cannot match it. Munich has the Bavarian State Opera at the National Theatre, three orchestras of real standing, chamber opera in the gilded Cuvilliés Theatre and a long-established summer opera festival.

Nuremberg's Staatstheater stages opera, ballet and drama in repertory. Summer is the city's livelier season, with free folk and world music at the Bardentreffen and an open-air orchestral concert in the Luitpoldhain. It is a good regional stage, but not a reason to travel.

Munich has the stronger bathing culture. It has the Art Nouveau Müller'sches Volksbad with its Roman-style steam bath in the centre, Erding's huge thermal complex about forty minutes away, and spa towns such as Bad Tölz towards the mountains.

Nuremberg relies on its neighbours: the thermal spa with sauna gardens in Fürth, a short U-Bahn ride away, and the saline pools of Bad Windsheim an hour west. Both cities share the German custom of mixed, textile-free saunas and slow afternoons in a beer garden.