Nice or Pisa?

In Nice the sea is at the end of the street. About 7km of pebble shore runs below the promenade, the water is clear and blue, and the sandy coves at Villefranche and Beaulieu are a few minutes along the coast. The stones are the catch, which is why loungers and water shoes make a difference.

Pisa's coast is about 12km away by bus, but it has sand rather than pebbles. The long, shallow beaches of Tirrenia and Calambrone, backed by pine woods, are easy for paddling. The water near the mouth of the Arno is rarely clear, though, and most visitors treat the beach as a summer afternoon off.

The two share a street food: Nice's socca and Pisa's cecina are both chickpea flatbreads baked in wood ovens. Nice has the fuller kitchen behind it. Its Ligurian-style dishes, the Cours Saleya market, the tiny Bellet vineyards and a few serious kitchens in the hills give you more to explore over a week.

Pisa serves plain, generous Tuscan cooking such as ribollita, game and salt cod, at its best in the student trattorias around Piazza delle Vettovaglie. It is honest and good value but narrower, and there is little serious dining. In both cities, skip the tables beside the main sights.

Each city fills two or three days, but in different ways. Pisa has the single great set piece: the marble cathedral, the baptistery, the Leaning Tower and the Camposanto together on one lawn. Walk on into the medieval city and you find Piazza dei Cavalieri, Santa Maria della Spina and the San Matteo museum.

Nice has no monument on that scale. Its strength is twentieth-century art, with Matisse in Cimiez, Chagall's biblical cycle and MAMAC, set against an Italianate old town and the villas and Russian cathedral of the Belle Époque resort. Pisa is the choice for architecture and medieval painting, Nice for modern art.

A night out in Nice usually means dinner in Vieux Nice and then a slow wander between the wine and cocktail bars in its narrow lanes, where students, locals and visitors share the same doorways. The harbour suits a quieter drink with an older crowd, and in summer the evenings stretch out at the beach clubs and along the seafront. From autumn to spring the old town empties sooner, and anyone after proper clubs takes the train to Monaco or Cannes.

Pisa's version is smaller and depends on the university calendar. In term time you get a glass outside a little bar in the squares by the old market, or an aperitivo under the arcades of Borgo Stretto, with conversation running on late. Out of term it fades early, the streets around the tower are empty after dark, and in summer whatever life there is moves to bars on the beach. Nice gives you more to do after dinner, while Pisa gives you a quieter piazza.

Nice has more outdoors because the Alps come down to the sea there. It has cape paths at Cap Ferrat and Cap d'Ail, cycling on the corniches and limestone gorges behind the coast. The Mercantour is about two hours away and Isola 2000 and Auron offer skiing in winter. Diving and sailing are easy to arrange.

Pisa's nature is flatter and gentler. The San Rossore park, with its pine forest, wetlands, dunes and fallow deer, begins at the edge of the city and suits bikes and horses. The Monte Pisano has walks along olive terraces. For real mountain hiking you need to go to the Apuan Alps or the Cinque Terre.

Both are excellent bases. The difference is what lies along the line. From Nice, the trips run along one coast: Monaco, Èze, Villefranche, Menton, Antibes and Cannes, plus Grasse and Saint-Paul-de-Vence inland and Sanremo across the Italian border. Almost all are under an hour away.

From Pisa, the trips lead to first-rank cities. Florence and the Uffizi are about an hour away and Lucca is under half an hour. The Cinque Terre are a train ride north, and with a car you can reach Volterra, San Gimignano and Siena. Nice offers a string of different seaside towns, Pisa offers Renaissance Tuscany.

Both are easy with children without being made for them. Nice has more in town for them, with the playgrounds and water jets of the Promenade du Paillon and the animals at Parc Phoenix, but its pebble beaches are hard on small feet.

In Pisa, children get the tower photo and the lawn to run on, though younger ones cannot climb the tower. There are also the shallow sandy beaches at Tirrenia and bike rides in San Rossore. Midsummer heat is the thing to plan around in both cities.

Neither city needs a car, but they work differently. Nice is bigger, so the tram from the airport across the city and the buses up to Cimiez do real work, and the coastal trains handle the day trips. Crowded summer trains are its main drawback.

Pisa is small enough to walk from end to end in about half an hour. The airport is unusually close and linked by a shuttle train, and the station is a rail hub for western Tuscany.

Nice has more variety. Avenue Jean Médecin is the main high street, and the streets around rue Paradis have the luxury labels. The old town sells Provençal soaps, olive oil and fabrics, and the Cours Saleya holds an antiques market on Mondays.

Pisa's shopping is everyday Italian, along Corso Italia and under the arcades of Borgo Stretto, with a monthly antiques market by the river. Serious fashion or crafts mean a trip to Florence or Lucca.

Pisa is the cheaper place to stay. Central rooms are mid-range, the student trattorias keep meals fair, and the small centre costs nothing to walk. The tower climb and the cafés beside it are the main expenses.

Nice is expensive by southern European standards, especially for seafront rooms in summer and private beach loungers. Cheap trams and coastal trains, low museum entry fees and socca lunches help, and spring and late autumn are easier on the budget.

Nice has more to offer. The Opéra de Nice stages opera, ballet and Philharmonic concerts, the Théâtre National puts on drama, and two events are worth planning a trip around: the Nice Jazz Festival in July and the Carnival in February.

Pisa's main stage is the Teatro Verdi, a horseshoe-shaped house whose autumn-to-spring season makes for a relaxed night of Italian opera. Beyond that there are university concerts and church recitals, and bigger productions mean going to Florence.

Neither city has a bathing tradition within its own streets, but Pisa has real thermal water close by. San Giuliano Terme, used since Roman times, has a spa in its 18th-century bath palace, and Casciana Terme has a large public pool.

Nice relies on seafront hotel spas and thalassotherapy centres along the coast. Its calm comes from the sea itself: an early swim, a long lunch and a walk along the promenade at dusk, best enjoyed out of season.