Pittsburgh or St. Louis?

Neither city is a place for swimming, but Pittsburgh at least has somewhere to go. Lake Arthur's small sand beaches lie about 45 minutes north, and the long sands of Presque Isle on Lake Erie are a two-hour drive.

St. Louis has nothing comparable nearby. The Mississippi and Missouri are too strong to swim in, so on a humid summer day the choice is a pool or a long drive into the Ozarks for a reservoir lake.

The two eat about equally well, but in different ways. Pittsburgh's table has an Eastern European accent, with pierogies and haluski in neighbourhood diners. The Strip District makes a full morning of grocers and fishmongers, and chef-led kitchens in the old industrial buildings of Lawrenceville and East Liberty serve more ambitious cooking.

St. Louis is more about its own odd local dishes and cheap, hearty eating. Try toasted ravioli, Provel-topped cracker-crust pizza, gooey butter cake and serious rib barbecue, then trattorias on The Hill and Bosnian grills along South Grand. Beer is woven into the city's history around the old Anheuser-Busch brewery in Soulard.

The sights are on a similar level, but they tell different stories. Pittsburgh's come from steel fortunes and lean towards art: the Carnegie Museums, the Nationality Rooms of the Cathedral of Learning, the Warhol Museum and the installations of the Mattress Factory. The rivers and bridges seen from Mount Washington are a sight in themselves.

St. Louis is about the nation's westward story. You get the Gateway Arch and its museum, the Old Courthouse where the Dred Scott case began, the Cathedral Basilica's mosaics and the Wainwright Building. Its main art and history museums in Forest Park are free.

Neither is a reason to travel for going out, and both spread their bars across separate neighbourhoods. Pittsburgh is mostly bars, with cocktail bars and breweries on Lawrenceville's Butler Street and loud student crawls on East Carson Street.

St. Louis has a wider mix. There are blues taverns in Soulard, dance bars on Washington Avenue, the Grove's LGBTQ+ strip and casinos that stay open late. However, its streets go quiet early outside weekends and baseball season, and you'll need taxis between areas.

Pittsburgh's landscape is the more dramatic and the easier to reach. Wooded slopes rise right behind its neighbourhoods, and you can paddle and cycle the riverside paths. The Laurel Highlands add the Ohiopyle gorge with rafting and waterfalls, plus ridges that blaze with colour in autumn.

St. Louis offers gentler country. Forest Park is a large green space in town, and the Ozark foothills bring river bluffs and caves at Castlewood and boulders at Elephant Rocks. The Katy Trail suits cyclists, and wintering bald eagles near Alton are a seasonal bonus. It is pleasant and rolling rather than striking.

St. Louis has more worth leaving town for. Cahokia Mounds, a UNESCO-listed pre-Columbian city, is only twenty minutes away. Around it are the cobbled riverfront of St. Charles, the French colonial houses of Ste. Genevieve, the German wine towns of Hermann and Augusta, Twain's Hannibal and Lincoln's Springfield.

Pittsburgh has one superb day out in Fallingwater, which pairs with Kentuck Knob and the fort town of Ligonier, plus the Flight 93 memorial further east. Beyond that the choice runs thin. Both cities need a car for nearly every outing.

Both are easy, relaxed places for children, with a slight edge to St. Louis. Its City Museum, a climbable warren of slides and tunnels in an old shoe warehouse, has no real equal, and the zoo and Science Center are free.

Pittsburgh's advantage is clustering. The Science Center with its submarine, the Children's Museum and the National Aviary all sit together on the North Side. It also has famous dinosaur halls and Kennywood's old wooden coasters. Both cities need a car with small children, and St. Louis summers are the hotter.

Pittsburgh is the more manageable without a car, at least at its core. You can walk from downtown across the bridges to the North Side or along the river to the Strip, and the T and the inclines cover the rest. Its outer neighbourhoods are slow to reach by bus and over the hills.

St. Louis is built for driving. MetroLink usefully links the airport, Forest Park, the Central West End and downtown, but The Hill, Soulard and South Grand need a car or taxi. On the plus side, the roads are uncongested and parking is easy.

Shopping is low-key in both, and neither is worth a trip for it. Pittsburgh's best browsing is in the food and kitchenware stalls of the Strip District and the vintage shops of Butler Street, with Walnut Street in Shadyside its nearest thing to a boutique strip.

St. Louis offers the antiques, records and Latin American shops of Cherokee Street, plus the student-flavoured Delmar Loop. In both cities, the big brands are out in suburban malls.

Costs are much the same, both well below the big coastal cities, but you save in different places. In St. Louis, the free zoo and museums of Forest Park cut sightseeing costs, though nearly every visitor ends up paying for a hire car or taxis.

In Pittsburgh, staying near downtown lets you walk to much of what matters. Rides between neighbourhoods add up, though, and room rates climb on big football and concert weekends.

Both cities have a respected orchestra and a fine downtown theatre district, so the difference lies in style. Pittsburgh's Cultural District is the more concentrated, with the symphony in Heinz Hall and opera and ballet at the Benedum, plus the jazz legacy of the Hill District that August Wilson wrote about.

St. Louis has two summer specialities: musicals under the stars at the Muny in Forest Park and the Opera Theatre's festival season. It also has a deeper claim on the blues, from Chuck Berry and W.C. Handy to the National Blues Museum and live sets in Soulard through the week.

Pittsburgh's calm is found under glass and out in the hills. On a cold day, the warm glasshouses of Phipps Conservatory are its quietest refuge. For a proper spa stay, the resort hotels of the Laurel Highlands are about an hour and a half's drive away.

St. Louis has no resort country close by, so rest there comes from the slow pace of the city itself. A slow morning in the Missouri Botanical Garden's Japanese garden or a walk round Forest Park is the most restful thing on offer. For treatments, there are day spas in Clayton and the Central West End.