Nuremberg or Salzburg?

Neither city is a place for swimming, but Salzburg has better lakes within reach. Fuschlsee, Wolfgangsee and Mondsee are half an hour to forty-five minutes away, with clear green water below steep hills, and you get in from jetties, lawns and small pebble shores.

Nuremberg's nearest swimming is the Franconian Lake District, around an hour south. These are reservoirs such as the Brombachsee, flatter and plainer, though the strips of sand may suit small children better than pebbles. At both, a swim is something extra for a hot afternoon.

Nuremberg eats better, mainly because of its beer. Franconia has a huge number of small breweries, so the old-town taverns and riverside beer gardens pour local lagers and smoky Kellerbier. With them come beechwood-grilled finger-sized bratwurst, Schäufele on a Sunday and Lebkuchen all year.

Salzburg's Austrian cooking is just as hearty, with schnitzel, Kasnocken and the peaked Salzburger Nockerl, and its coffee houses are the best part of the scene. The weak spot is the old town, where many restaurants serve the same menus to tour groups. Better meals are found in the inns of the outer districts and on the hills.

Both have a historic core you can walk, with a fortress on the hill above, but they come from different centuries. Salzburg is one Baroque ensemble built by the prince-archbishops: cathedral, Residenz, Mirabell, the Mozart houses and the St Peter catacombs, all close together and done in two or three unhurried days.

Nuremberg is Gothic and medieval, ringed by its walls and visibly rebuilt after the war. It adds two things Salzburg has no match for. One is the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, which takes a full day on its own. The other is the sobering twentieth-century history of the Rally Grounds and Courtroom 600.

Nuremberg gives the better night out, though neither is a clubbing city. Gostenhof's small bars and alternative venues, students on the squares and riverbanks in summer, and the weekend crowd from Erlangen keep things going later.

In Salzburg an evening usually means a concert and then a litre mug in a beer hall, and the old town is quiet by midnight. Anyone wanting a proper night out takes the train to Munich.

Here Salzburg is in a different league. Wooded ridges rise right in the centre, a cable car lifts you to limestone ridge walks on the Untersberg at about 1,800m, and the Gaisberg draws hikers and paragliders. Berchtesgaden National Park, the Königssee and the Salzkammergut lakes are all close.

Nuremberg's outdoors is gentler. There is the Reichswald pine forest at the edge of town and riverside cycling along the Pegnitz, and Franconian Switzerland, about an hour away, has wooded valleys, caves and well-known climbing crags. It is good country for walkers and cyclists, but there are no mountains.

Both make excellent bases, but the outings are of different kinds. Nuremberg's are historic towns, nearly all easy by train: Bamberg's cathedral hill and smoked-beer taverns in under an hour, Regensburg on the Danube and baroque Würzburg in about an hour, and Munich about an hour by fast train. Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Dinkelsbühl, two of the best-preserved walled towns on the Romantic Road, take a little longer.

Salzburg's trips are lakes, salt and mountains. Hallstatt is about an hour and a half away, St Wolfgang, St Gilgen and the old imperial spa town of Bad Ischl are closer, and the salt mines at Hallein and Berchtesgaden and the clifftop fortress at Werfen are also within easy reach. Munich and Linz work by rail, but the lake villages are where a car saves the most time.

Nuremberg wins children over with its centuries of toy-making. There is the Toy Museum, the railway museum with its full-size locomotives, a zoo in wooded old quarries with a dolphin and manatee house, and a play park with water play in Zirndorf. In Advent, a children's market adds carousels and a small steam train.

Salzburg's best family outings either get children wet or take them underground. The trick fountains at Hellbrunn soak unsuspecting visitors, Haus der Natur is hands-on, and the marionettes are popular too. Nearby, the salt mines have wooden miners' slides and boat rides on underground lakes. In both cities the cobbled climb to the castle above town is hard work with a pushchair.

Both centres can be walked, but beyond them Nuremberg is a little easier. Its U-Bahn, trams and S-Bahn run on one ticket out to the zoo, the Rally Grounds and Fürth, and regional trains reach every day trip.

Salzburg's core is even more compact and largely free of cars, and trolleybuses cover the city. There is no metro or tram, though, and the buses to the lakes are slow enough that many visitors hire a car.

Neither is a shopping destination, and what you take home differs. Nuremberg means Lebkuchen in decorated tins, wooden toys, tin figures and crafts from the Handwerkerhof, with chain stores along Königstraße.

Salzburg's speciality is Tracht: dirndls and loden jackets, often made to measure, in shops around Getreidegasse, along with Mozartkugeln and regional cheese from the farmers' market. Both have well-known Advent markets, and Nuremberg's Christkindlesmarkt is the more famous of the two.

Nuremberg is clearly the cheaper stay. Tavern meals, local beer and transport cost little, and hotels are fairly priced apart from trade-fair weeks and Advent.

In Salzburg, hotels in and near the old town are expensive all year and restaurants in the centre charge well above the Austrian average, with the summer festival and Advent dearer still. Staying across the river, eating in outer-district beer halls and buying the city card all help.

For music, Salzburg is far ahead. The summer festival fills the Grosses Festspielhaus and the Felsenreitschule with leading performers, and Jedermann is played in front of the cathedral. Mozart Week and the Easter Festival add two more seasons, and the Mozarteum, the Landestheater and the Marionette Theatre fill the rest of the year.

Nuremberg has a respectable regional programme: opera and ballet in the Art Nouveau Staatstheater, two orchestras, the free Bardentreffen folk weekend and a large rock festival by the Zeppelinfeld. For rock rather than Mozart, Nuremberg is the better choice.

Salzburg is the more restful of the two. It slows down once the day-trippers leave, the Paracelsus Bad in the city park has saunas, and proper spa country is close: the brine baths of Bad Reichenhall about twenty minutes away and the radon springs of the Gastein valley.

Nuremberg relies on a large thermal spa in Fürth, saunas at the edge of town (expect them to be nude and mixed) and the saline pools of Bad Windsheim an hour west. Here the local way to unwind is a slow afternoon in a beer garden.