Naples or Tirana?

Neither city makes a beach vacation, and they come out roughly level, but the sea is part of life in Naples in a way it isn't in Tirana. In Naples the water is right below the city: locals swim off the rocks under the Lungomare and at the small Posillipo lidos, and a boat ride takes you to the clear, rocky coves of Procida, Ischia and Capri.

Tirana is inland, so a swim means going by road to Durrës. There you find long, sandy, shallow water that suits small children, though the beach is lined with hotels and very full on summer weekends.

Naples is clearly the better place to eat. It's where pizza comes from, and you can eat fried pizza, frittatine and sfogliatelle as you walk, then find buffalo mozzarella and San Marzano tomatoes at the Pignasecca market.

Tirana's food is good honest farm cooking: tavë kosi, fërgesë, morning byrek and grilled lamb, at its best in the hill farm restaurants outside town. It's pleasant but doesn't have the depth of Naples. Neither city offers much international food.

This is where the two differ most. In Naples you walk through more than two thousand years of history: the Greek grid of Spaccanapoli, Pompeii's frescoes at the Archaeological Museum, the Veiled Christ in the Cappella Sansevero and the cisterns and catacombs below the streets.

Tirana's story is mostly 20th century. Bunk'Art and the House of Leaves are powerful visits about the communist years, and Skanderbeg Square with the Et'hem Bey Mosque is worth an afternoon. Two days covers it all.

The two are broadly level, but the evenings feel different. In Naples a night out happens in the street: students sit on the steps of Piazza Bellini, and in Chiaia people with drinks fill the alleys. There are hardly any clubs worth seeking out.

Tirana puts nearly everything in Blloku, with cocktail bars, lounge terraces and a crowd that dresses up. A few larger clubs near the Grand Park lake stay open until the early hours, so Tirana is the better choice if you want to dance.

Naples has the more remarkable landscape. You can walk up to Vesuvius's crater rim, explore the craters of the Phlegraean Fields, such as the oak-wooded Astroni, snorkel in the Gaiola underwater park, and take a long day out on the Path of the Gods above Amalfi.

Tirana's great advantage is how close the mountains are. The Dajti cable car lifts you to beech and pine forest at 1,000m in a quarter of an hour, and the Bovilla gorge and Gamti's trails are about an hour away. The Albanian Alps, though, need more than a day.

Naples is far ahead. Pompeii and Herculaneum are each under an hour away on a local train, and so are the villas at Oplontis. The palace at Caserta, the ferries to Capri and Procida, the Amalfi Coast and Paestum add up to more famous places than most visitors have time to see.

Tirana has good day trips too: Skanderbeg's castle at Kruja, the Roman amphitheatre at Durrës, and Berat's white Ottoman houses about two hours south. They are mostly by car or minibus on slow roads, though, so each one takes a full day.

Neither city is easy with small children, and both have the same problems: assertive traffic, poor pavements and summer heat. Tirana offers more open space, with the Grand Park's playgrounds, the pedestrian Skanderbeg Square and the gentle sandy shallows at Durrës.

Naples suits older children better. The underground tunnels, the funicular rides, a ferry to an island and the ruins of Pompeii hold their attention. Many families stay in Sorrento and visit the city for the day.

The two are equally easy to get around, in different ways. Naples has Metro Line 1, with stations decorated as art galleries, and four funiculars up to Vomero and Posillipo, but its buses crawl in traffic and the Circumvesuviana is crowded and often late.

Tirana is flat and small enough to walk, with almost everything within twenty minutes. There's no metro or tram, and cheap taxis cover Bunk'Art and the Dajti cable car. Day trips need a minibus or a hire car, whereas from Naples you can reach most of them by train or ferry.

Naples gives you far more reasons to shop. Chiaia's tailoring workshops make suits and silk ties, the Galleria Umberto I is a grand iron-and-glass arcade, nativity figures are carved year-round on Via San Gregorio Armeno, and coral cameos come from Torre del Greco.

Tirana's best shopping is the Pazari i Ri: cheese, honey, raki and dried herbs, with felt hats and filigree silver on the side. Its fashion is mostly high-street chains in malls on the edge of the centre.

Tirana is noticeably kinder to your budget. A meal of grilled meat and salad, a glass of raki, a taxi across town and a museum ticket all cost little, and comfortable mid-range hotels in the centre are good value.

Naples is cheap for a Western European city as long as you stay in town and eat pizza and street food. Once you add island ferries, an Amalfi hotel or the entry fees at Pompeii and Herculaneum, the costs rise quickly.

For an evening of music, Naples offers far more. Its opera house is one of the great historic stages of Europe, worth a visit for the room alone, and over a few nights you can usually choose between opera, ballet, a recital by conservatory students or chamber music in a Baroque church. The city's own song tradition is still part of everyday life, so you may hear it over dinner even without buying a ticket.

In Tirana, the opera and ballet house on Skanderbeg Square is an easy evening that you can often arrange on the day, but there is little else on a formal stage, and live music beyond it means a few bars with jazz or bands. In both cities most visitors will struggle with the theatre, which is in Italian or Neapolitan dialect in one and Albanian in the other. The biggest difference is in folk music: Albania's iso-polyphonic singing is rarely performed in the capital, while in Naples Neapolitan song is easy to find.

Naples has proper thermal water nearby. The springs at Agnano have been used since Roman times, and Ischia's terraced pools above the sea are an hour away by hydrofoil, though the city itself is anything but calm.

Tirana has no bathing tradition of its own. Beyond hotel spas, the nearest springs are the plain sulphur baths at Llixha. Rest there means slow hours over coffee, the evening xhiro along the boulevards and a cable car ride up to the quiet of Dajti.