Positano or Venice?

Positano is built around its beaches. Spiaggia Grande and Fornillo lie right below the houses, Arienzo, Laurito and other coves are reached by stairway or boat, and the water is clear and deep. The drawback is the shore itself: coarse, steep pebbles that call for water shoes and are fully taken by mid-morning in high summer.

In Venice the beach means a trip out to the Lido. It has long stretches of fine sand and shallow water that suits small children far better than Positano's sudden drop-offs. The sea there is greenish, though, and most visitors give it one hot afternoon rather than plan a stay around it.

Positano's strength is the setting. You get long seafood lunches on terraces above the sea, scialatielli and clams, desserts made with the local lemons and limoncello to finish. Beyond that the menus repeat, there is little casual eating or market life, and many kitchens close through the winter.

Venice gives you more to eat and more ways to eat it. You can stand at a bacaro counter with cicchetti and a spritz, then sit down to a lagoon dish from the Rialto market such as cuttlefish risotto blackened with its ink. That everyday food culture is what Positano lacks, though in Venice you find it in the quieter sestieri, away from the picture menus around San Marco.

The gap here is enormous. Venice is one of the great art cities of Europe. It has the Basilica and the Doge's Palace, the Accademia, the Frari, San Rocco, modern art at the Guggenheim and Punta della Dogana, and masterpieces tucked into small churches across town.

Positano's culture is the town itself: pastel houses stacked up the ravine, the majolica dome of Santa Maria Assunta and the Roman villa excavated beneath it. That fills a pleasant morning, and anyone wanting more heads to Naples or along the coast.

Neither place is made for late nights, and both are at their best in the early evening. In Venice that means the aperitivo crowd in the bacari around the Rialto and along the Fondamenta della Misericordia, with student bars in Campo Santa Margherita staying open a little longer, all year round.

Positano has the more glamorous single option, a club in a cave at the end of Spiaggia Grande, plus a few bars near the beach. It is a summer scene, though, and it disappears once the season ends.

Positano has by far the more spectacular outdoors. Here the mountains drop straight into the sea. The Path of the Gods runs along the clifftops with views to Capri, wooded trails climb past Montepertuso to ridges over 1,000m, and kayaks and boats reach the grottoes below.

Venice's nature is the lagoon: quiet marshes around Torcello and Sant'Erasmo with egrets and flamingos, kayaking or rowing in the Venetian style, and flat cycling on the Lido and Pellestrina. It is gentle and rewarding, but serious walking means a long trip to the Dolomites.

Both make excellent bases, but in different ways. From Positano the day trips go mostly by boat, to Amalfi, Ravello, Capri and Sorrento, with Pompeii, Herculaneum and Paestum further off. That means ancient sites and coastal scenery, but also ferries that run mostly in season and a slow coast road.

From Venice, fast trains do the work: Padua, Vicenza and Verona for art and architecture, with Bologna and Trieste further out. Murano, Burano and Torcello are just across the lagoon, and all of this is easy in any month.

Venice is the easier of the two with children, though neither is simple. Boats instead of buses, car-free alleys, glass-blowing on Murano, dinosaurs at the natural history museum and the shallow Lido give children plenty to enjoy, even if the bridges make pushchairs a struggle.

Positano is mostly stairs, with nothing made for children beyond the sea and beaches that shelve steeply. Older children who swim well and love boats will be happy, but families with toddlers are better off elsewhere.

Venice is much easier to move around. You can cross the centre on foot in under an hour, vaporetti link the Grand Canal with the Lido and the islands, and trains and buses arrive right at the edge of the historic city. The main nuisances are stepped bridges and crowded boats.

In Positano every walk means hundreds of steps, the coast road is narrow and slow, and the buses fill up in summer. Ferries are the best link to neighbouring towns but mostly run only in season, and a car is more trouble than it is worth.

Venice offers more range. Its crafts include Murano glass, Burano lace, papier-mâché masks, marbled paper and furlane slippers, and there are real workshops in Dorsoduro and Castello. The big fashion names are near San Marco. The skill is telling true craft from imported copies on the main routes.

Positano does one thing well. Its lanes are given over to moda Positano linen and resort wear, sandals made to fit while you wait, ceramics and lemon goods. It makes a pleasant browse, but everything shares the same look.

Both are among the most expensive places to stay in Italy, but Venice gives a little more room to save. Eating cicchetti at the counter, staying in the quieter sestieri or across in Mestre, and visiting in winter outside carnival can bring costs down a good deal.

Positano is harder on the wallet, with sea-view rooms, beach loungers, terrace meals, boats and transfers all adding up. The main ways round it are to stay in Praiano or Sorrento and come in by bus or ferry, or to visit in May or October.

Venice has a real stage. La Fenice runs a full season of opera, ballet and concerts, and the Teatro Goldoni puts on drama. The Biennale brings contemporary music and dance, and Vivaldi concerts in churches fill most evenings, though their quality varies.

Positano has only the odd summer concert in a church or square. Its best musical evening is a trip to Ravello's summer festival, with concerts on a terrace above the sea.

Neither has a bathing tradition, and in both the spas belong to hotels. In Positano, rest means a terrace, a pool cut into the cliff and the sea below. It is best in May, June and late September, when the crowds are thinner and the stairs are less tiring in the heat.

Venice's calm is the quiet of a city without traffic, found early and late in Castello, Cannaregio and on Giudecca. It also has a real thermal option within reach: the hot mud and pools of Abano Terme, about an hour away.