Salerno or Venice?

Salerno is the better base for time by the sea, although in neither city is the town beach the main reason to swim. Salerno's grey sand by the port is fine for a quick dip. The real rewards are nearby: the long sandy beaches backed by pine woods towards Paestum, and the clear water in the Amalfi Coast's pebbly coves.

Venice's one real beach is the Lido, a long strip of fine Adriatic sand a short boat ride away. It is shallow and gentle, but the water is greenish and much of the sand is taken up by rows of cabanas. For most visitors it is one hot afternoon, not part of every day.

Both cities eat well, in very different styles. Salerno's is a sit-down Campanian table: fried seafood, pasta with clams, wood-fired pizza and buffalo mozzarella made that morning on the plain towards Paestum. Across the old town it is reliably good, everyday food.

Venice is at its best standing at a bacaro counter with cicchetti and a spritz, or over lagoon dishes such as black cuttlefish risotto made with fish from the Rialto market. The real difference is consistency. The tourist routes in Venice are lined with poor restaurants, so a good meal takes more seeking out.

This is where Venice pulls far ahead. The whole city is the monument, from San Marco and the Doge's Palace to the palazzi on the Grand Canal. Its painting is among the richest anywhere, with the Venetian masters in the Accademia and the Frari, and modern art at the Guggenheim and the Biennale.

Salerno's heritage is real but compact. It has the Norman cathedral with the crypt of Saint Matthew, the medicinal garden linked to Europe's earliest medical school and the Arechi Castle above the town. Together they fill a day or two, and for the great ancient sites you head out to Paestum or Pompeii.

Neither city is built for clubbing, but Salerno stays up later. On weekends and all through summer, the lanes around Largo Campo and Via dei Mercanti fill with young locals drinking outside wine bars into the night, and Naples is close for a bigger night out. Venice is at its liveliest at aperitivo time along the Fondamenta della Misericordia and around the Rialto. Campo Santa Margherita stays busy a little longer, then the city falls silent around midnight.

Salerno has some of Europe's most dramatic scenery on its doorstep: limestone cliffs, terraced lemon groves and old mule tracks across the Lattari mountains, with the Cilento's wooded hills and river gorges to the south. Serious hiking and boat or kayak trips along the coast are both on offer.

Venice's outdoors is the lagoon, which is flatter and quieter. There are salt marshes around Torcello with herons and flamingos, lessons in Venetian rowing and cycling along the sea walls of the Lido and Pellestrina. For real mountains you need the Dolomites, more than two hours away.

Both are excellent bases, but Salerno has the edge for famous sights within an hour. Paestum's temples and Pompeii are each about half an hour away by train, and the ferry to Amalfi and Positano is short. Naples, Herculaneum and the palace at Caserta are all easy days out.

Venice answers with the cities of the Veneto by fast train: Giotto's chapel in Padua, Verona's arena and Palladio's Vicenza. It also has its own lagoon outings to Murano, Burano and Torcello, which you reach by boat without needing a train at all.

Salerno is the easier city with children. Its long, flat, car-free promenade has playgrounds and gelato all along it, and the shallow sandy beaches south of town suit small swimmers. The steep old town and the winding Amalfi road are the drawbacks.

Children love the idea of Venice, with boats instead of buses and glass-blowing on Murano. In practice, hundreds of stepped bridges defeat pushchairs and there are very few parks, so it works best as a short stay with older children.

Salerno is laid out along a line and Venice as a maze. In Salerno the station, the shopping street, the seafront and the old town sit on one strip you can walk end to end, with a bus up to the castle and regional trains straight to Naples, Pompeii and Paestum. In summer, the ferry is the way to go along the Amalfi Coast, because the coastal buses crawl and parking is scarce.

Venice has no cars or bikes, so you walk almost everywhere. Most of the centre is within about forty minutes on foot, through alleys that end at canals and get nearly everyone lost. Vaporetti run along the Grand Canal and out to the islands, and traghetto gondolas cross between the bridges. The catch is the steps on hundreds of bridges, which are hard going with wheeled luggage or a wheelchair.

Venice is the more rewarding place to shop, because its crafts are made in the city itself: Murano glass, Burano lace, papier-mâché masks, marbled paper and furlane slippers. Big fashion names also line the streets near San Marco. The skill is avoiding the imported copies sold along the main routes.

Salerno's Corso Vittorio Emanuele is mostly Italian chain stores. Its best buys come from the surrounding coast: Vietri ceramics, limoncello and colatura from Cetara.

In Salerno the extra costs are mostly ones you choose. Outside the summer it is an easy city on a modest budget. In July and August rooms fill up, a lido sunbed becomes a daily outlay and several days of ferries along the coast soon mount up. The one fixed expense is entry to Pompeii and Paestum, which most visitors come for anyway.

In Venice much of the cost comes with simply being there. Rooms in the historic centre stay dear even in the quieter months, and peak in summer and at carnival. A day on Murano, Burano or the Lido means paying for the boat, and sitting down at a café table on the piazza is a luxury in itself. Late autumn and winter outside the festivals, a bed in Mestre and lunch standing at a bacaro counter narrow the gap, but not by much.

Venice has the stronger stage. La Fenice, where Verdi and Rossini premiered works, runs a full season of opera, ballet and concerts, and the Biennale adds festivals of contemporary music, theatre and dance. Vivaldi played in the city where he worked is on offer most evenings, though the quality varies.

Salerno's Teatro Verdi, modelled on the San Carlo in Naples, runs a respectable season, and the Ravello Festival's cliff-top concerts make a memorable summer evening. For more than that, you go to Naples.

Neither city has a bathing tradition of its own, so both rely on hotel spas, with thermal water about an hour away. For Salerno that means open-air sulphur pools at Contursi Terme. For Venice it means the mud and thermal pools of Abano near Padua, in use since Roman times.

What differs is the kind of calm. In Salerno it is a sunset walk under the palms and a long lunch, set against traffic noise from the port and the main roads. In Venice it is the quiet of a car-free city in Castello, Cannaregio or on Giudecca, early in the morning and late at night, away from the crowds in the middle of the day.