Nice or Venice?

Nice lives on its shore: about 7km of clear, blue water right below the Promenade des Anglais, swimmable from June into October, with private clubs renting mattresses to soften the pebbles. The catch is the stones themselves, and the sandier coves are a short ride east or west rather than in town.

Venice makes the opposite trade. The Lido's fine sand and shallow, gentle water are kinder to small children, but the sea is greenish, the island is a boat ride from the sights, and few visitors plan a stay around it.

Both cities cook a strongly local cuisine rather than a broad one, and in both the tourist-facing tables near the main sights are the ones to skip. Nice has the edge for eating well without trying: socca hot from the wood oven, pissaladière and stuffed vegetables, the morning market on the Cours Saleya and wine from the tiny Bellet hillsides.

Venice's strength is a ritual more than a dish: standing at a bacaro counter near the Rialto with cicchetti and a spritz, then lagoon cooking such as cuttlefish risotto black with its ink. Good sit-down meals take more hunting in the quieter sestieri, because the routes around San Marco are thick with picture menus.

Here Venice is in another league. The whole city is the sight, centuries of palaces and churches on water with nothing modern in view, and the art inside runs from Titian and Tintoretto in the places they were painted for to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the Biennale. A week does not exhaust it.

Nice offers a good art city's share: the Matisse and Chagall museums in Cimiez, MAMAC, the ochre lanes of Vieux Nice and the Belle Époque villas of the resort era. That fills two or three days well, but nothing in it compares with San Marco or the Grand Canal.

Neither is a clubbing city, but Nice keeps going later. The lanes of Vieux Nice fill with wine bars, pubs and cocktail bars, the port adds a few grown-up options, and summer beach clubs stretch the night further. Venice peaks at aperitivo hour along the Fondamenta della Misericordia and in Campo Santa Margherita, then falls silent around midnight, which suits a late walk better than a late drink.

Nice has mountains at its back and the sea at its feet. Walks on Castle Hill and Mont Boron start in town, the Cap Ferrat paths are a short ride away, road cyclists come for the corniches, and the Mercantour and the winter slopes of Isola 2000 are close enough for a day.

Venice's outdoors is gentler and narrower: kayaking or Venetian rowing in the northern lagoon among herons and flamingos, and cycling along the sea walls of the Lido and Pellestrina. Real hills mean the Euganean range near Padua, and the Dolomites are too far for an easy day.

Both are superb bases, and what differs is the kind of place you visit. From Nice the trips follow a coastline: Monaco, Menton, Èze, Antibes and Cannes by local train or bus, plus the perfume houses of Grasse, Saint-Paul-de-Vence and even Sanremo across the Italian border, most of them under an hour away.

From Venice they are a run of historic cities on fast trains, with Padua for Giotto, Vicenza for Palladio and Verona for its arena, and Murano, Burano and Torcello reached by boat across the lagoon. Nice is for sea towns and perched villages, Venice for art cities.

Nice is the easier place with children. The flat promenade, the playgrounds and water jets of the Promenade du Paillon, and the animals and greenhouses of Parc Phoenix give plenty to fill the day, though pebbles are hard on small feet.

Children love the idea of Venice, with boats instead of buses and no traffic, and the Lido's shallow sand is gentle. Day to day, though, the stepped bridges defeat pushchairs and there are few parks or playgrounds, so it works best as a short stay with older children.

Nice runs on rails and level pavements. A tram crosses the city from the airport to the centre and the port, buses climb to the museums of Cimiez, and the old town, Place Massena and the promenade are all within a flat half-hour walk, so wheeled luggage rolls easily. For Monaco or Cannes, the coastal trains take over.

Venice runs on feet and boats. With no cars at all, you can cross the centre on foot in about forty minutes, and the walk is a pleasure in itself. But the lanes dead-end at canals, hundreds of bridges have steps and the vaporetto lines are slow and packed, so every journey takes a little more effort.

There is little to choose between them for range, but they sell very different things. Nice is a city high street joined to a Provençal market town. Avenue Jean Médecin has the chain stores and Galeries Lafayette, the luxury houses sit around rue Paradis and avenue de Verdun, and the lanes of Vieux Nice sell olive oil, soaps, fabrics and candied fruit. On Mondays the Cours Saleya becomes a flea and antiques market.

Venice sells what it makes. Murano glass, Burano lace, papier-mâché masks, marbled paper and furlane slippers come from workshops in Dorsoduro, Castello and on Murano. Buy where you can see the craft being done, because the main routes are full of imported imitations. Venice has its own luxury streets on Calle Larga XXII Marzo and the Mercerie, where the big fashion names match those around rue Paradis. What it lacks is anything like Avenue Jean Médecin, so for chain stores and everyday shopping you go to Mestre on the mainland.

Nice keeps everyday costs down in ways Venice cannot. Trams and coastal trains cost little, many of the city's own museums are cheap to enter, and socca, market picnics and simple lunch menus away from the seafront feed you well. The real expense is a room near the sea in summer.

In Venice the extra cost is built into the place. Rooms in the historic centre, boats priced for visitors and paid entry to most sights and churches add up at almost every turn. Eating cicchetti at the counter and sleeping in Mestre or a quieter sestiere bring the bill down.

Venice offers more for an evening out. La Fenice, where Verdi and Rossini saw works premiered, runs a full season of opera, ballet and concerts, and the Biennale adds contemporary music, theatre and dance. Baroque concerts of Vivaldi in churches fill most nights, uneven in quality but with a real sense of place.

Nice has a respectable regional calendar at its opera house and the Théâtre National, and two big annual moments in the July jazz festival and the February Carnival. Outside those, it is mostly bar music in the old town.

Neither city has a bathing tradition, so in both, spa time means hotel treatment rooms, with thalassotherapy along the Riviera from Nice and the ancient thermal mud of Abano Terme within an hour of Venice. The calm differs in kind: in Nice it comes from an early swim and an evening stroll on the promenade, in Venice from the traffic-free hush of Castello, Cannaregio or Giudecca at dawn.