Munich or Zurich?

Neither city has a coast, but Zurich makes swimming part of the city itself. Its lawned lidos and wooden bathing houses at Utoquai, Mythenquai and Tiefenbrunnen, and the Letten river baths where swimmers float down the Limmat, are all a walk or a tram ride from the centre. The lake is also a touch warmer in high summer.

In Munich, swimming takes more effort. The gravel banks of the Isar at the Flaucher are for sunbathing and barbecues, and a proper swim in the Starnberger See or the Ammersee means an S-Bahn ride of up to an hour. In both cities the season runs from June to early September, and you swim from grass and jetties rather than sand.

Munich has the more distinctive table. The beer halls and chestnut-shaded beer gardens, serving roast pork, white sausage and pretzels, give you food that belongs to this city alone. You can also bring your own picnic to a beer garden, and the Viktualienmarkt beside Marienplatz is a real grazing market.

Zurich's cooking is more polished and less varied: veal in cream with rösti, fondue in the guild houses, and confectionery that beats anything in Munich, with the old Paradeplatz tea rooms as the sweet highlight. It has no open-air market to compare with the Viktualienmarkt and little street food, and every meal is expensive.

This is one of the widest gaps between the two. Munich's Kunstareal alone, with the Alte Pinakothek's old masters, the Glyptothek and the Lenbachhaus, outweighs all of Zurich's museums together. The Residenz, Nymphenburg and the Deutsches Museum add several more days, so a culture-minded visitor can fill a week here.

Zurich has a strong but smaller set: the Kunsthaus, the Swiss National Museum and the Rietberg, plus a well-kept Altstadt with the Grossmünster and the Chagall windows of the Fraumünster. Its old town feels more intact than Munich's centre, much of which was rebuilt after the war, but two or three days covers it.

Zurich has the edge for a serious night out, mainly because of its electronic music. The clubs of Kreis 4 and 5 and Zurich West run until morning at weekends, and Langstrasse has a rougher, livelier edge than anywhere in Munich. In summer the evenings move outdoors, to bars in the lake bathing houses.

Munich's nights are more sociable than wild: a long evening in a beer hall, perhaps followed by the cocktail and gay bars around Gärtnerplatz and Glockenbach. Both cities are quiet on weeknights, and in Zurich the price of drinks tends to cut evenings short.

Both cities have the Alps about an hour away, so the real difference is the landscape close to home. In Zurich, the lake with the Glarus Alps at its far end, the boats out to the villages and the Uetliberg a short train ride away make the outdoors part of an ordinary afternoon. Munich sits on a flat plain instead, with the English Garden and its Eisbach surfers, long cycle paths along the Isar and the Five Lakes region nearby, and Garmisch and the Zugspitze for higher hiking and skiing.

Munich's day trips lead into Bavaria and Austria, Zurich's across Switzerland, and both lists are long. From Munich you can reach Augsburg in half an hour, Nuremberg's castle and medieval Regensburg, baroque Salzburg across the border, and the royal castles, with Neuschwanstein about two hours away.

Zurich's journeys are generally shorter. Lucerne is under an hour away, Bern, Basel and St Gallen about an hour each, and the Rhine Falls and Stein am Rhein lie to the north. From either city the trains make a car unnecessary.

With children, Munich's days out lean towards museums and attractions, while Zurich's lean towards the water. Munich has the Hellabrunn zoo along the Isar, the hands-on Deutsches Museum, beer gardens with playgrounds and Legoland within driving distance.

Zurich's highlights are its zoo with the Madagascar rainforest hall, and the shallow lake lidos and boat trips that make summer days easy. There is no theme park nearby. Both cities are clean, safe and easy to manage with a pushchair.

Zurich is the easier city to get around. Trams reach every district, and buses, trains, funiculars and even lake boats all run on one ticket, with a punctuality Munich cannot always match.

Munich is still very good. Its centre is walkable, the U-Bahn and S-Bahn reach Nymphenburg, the Olympic Park and the lakes, and the flat streets are ideal for cycling. The main weak point is delays on the central S-Bahn line.

Both cities lean towards luxury, but Munich has the broader range. Besides the fashion houses of Maximilianstrasse, it has a long pedestrian high street of department stores, independent boutiques in Glockenbach and Schwabing, Tracht tailors and the December Christmas markets, and prices hurt a little less.

Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse is the grander single street, and nowhere beats it for Swiss watches and chocolate. Away from it, the Altstadt boutiques and the design shops under the viaduct arches in Zurich West offer a narrower, if well-chosen, selection.

This is where the two differ most. Munich is expensive for Germany, and hotels are the heaviest cost. Still, beer-hall meals, picnics in beer gardens, free parks and lakes and token Sunday museum fees keep a trip manageable.

Zurich is in another bracket. A simple room or a casual lunch costs far more, and even transport and museums are dear. Supermarket lunches, lake picnics and the free lidos help, but the same budget buys a noticeably longer or more comfortable trip in Munich.

Munich is one of Europe's great music cities, and Zurich, for all its quality, is not on the same scale. The Bavarian State Opera in the National Theatre, three orchestras of real standing, the rococo Cuvilliés Theatre and the Gärtnerplatztheater give a range of evenings few cities can match.

Zurich's Opernhaus and Tonhalle are first-rate, and the Schauspielhaus is among the leading German-language stages, but there are fewer houses to choose from. Zurich's distinctive side is its alternative scene at the Rote Fabrik and its summer performances by the lake.

The two are close, but the style is different. Munich has the Art Nouveau Müller'sches Volksbad, the huge thermal complex at Erding and the old spa towns towards the mountains, along with long, slow afternoons in its beer gardens. Zurich has thermal baths in the stone vaults of the old Hürlimann brewery with a rooftop pool, winter saunas in the lake bathing houses with cold dips between sessions, and the hot springs of Baden twenty minutes away.