Sorrento or Naples?

Sorrento comes out ahead because the swimming starts in town. A lift takes you down to the marinas, where lidos on wooden piers have ladders into clear, deep water, and the rocky inlet of the Bagni della Regina Giovanna is a short walk away. There is little sand, and in high summer much of the shore belongs to paid lidos.

In Naples the swimming is from the rocks below the Lungomare or at small lidos in Posillipo, and the water near the port is not always clean. For both places, the better coves are a boat ride away on Capri and the other islands.

Naples is the stronger place to eat. It is the home of pizza, and its street food runs from fried pizza to cones of seafood and sfogliatelle, with the Pignasecca and Porta Nolana markets showing what the kitchens cook with.

Sorrento cooks the same Campanian food with its own dishes, such as gnocchi alla sorrentina, fish all'acqua pazza and plenty of lemon. The centre is full of menus for tour groups, so the good meals are at Marina Grande, in the back lanes and up in the hill villages, where the peninsula's finest restaurants are. Neither place offers much beyond Italian food.

There is no real contest here. Naples has one of Europe's largest historic centres, packed with churches along Spaccanapoli. It also has the archaeological museum holding the treasures of Pompeii, the Veiled Christ in the Cappella Sansevero, a city of tunnels and catacombs underground, and the Capodimonte gallery and Royal Palace above.

Sorrento's own sights take a day or two: the cathedral, the cloister of San Francesco, the Museo Correale and the overgrown ravine of the Vallone dei Mulini. Most of its cultural visits mean leaving town.

Naples is far livelier after dark. Crowds drink on the steps of Piazza Bellini and fill the bar alleys of Chiaia until well past midnight, though the nights are about the street rather than clubs.

Sorrento's evening is a passeggiata on Corso Italia, a drink on a terrace over the bay, and perhaps a piano bar. Outside summer it goes quiet early. The last trains and ferries leave in the evening, so a big night in Naples means staying over there.

Both have fine landscapes on the doorstep, but the kind differs. Around Naples the landscape is volcanic. You can climb Vesuvius, walk the crater woods of Astroni and the rim of Monte Nuovo, and snorkel at the Gaiola underwater park below Posillipo. Inside the city, though, there is little green space.

Sorrento puts you on a limestone ridge of olive and lemon terraces, with footpaths leading straight out of town to Punta Campanella and the protected bay of Ieranto. Monte Faito and the Path of the Gods are also nearer, and boat trips to the grottoes of Capri are easy to arrange.

Both are superb bases, and what differs is which way the trips point. From Naples, ferries leave Molo Beverello for Capri, Ischia and Procida. The Bourbon palace at Caserta and the Roman sites of Pozzuoli and Cuma are close by, and Pompeii and Herculaneum are under an hour on the train.

Sorrento sits nearer the south. Pompeii is about half an hour away, Capri is a short crossing, and in summer boats run to Positano and Amalfi. Ischia, Procida and Caserta are further from here, and Naples itself is an easy day out.

In Naples the hard part is the streets. Scooters weave through the lanes, pavements are broken or missing, and steps and cobbles defeat a pushchair. Still, the city has a few things built for children, the Edenlandia amusement park, the zoo and the science museum, and older children love the tunnels underground and the funiculars.

Sorrento's flat, largely pedestrian centre is far kinder to a pushchair, but there is almost nothing in town made for children. Swimming means deep water off piers and rocks, and many hotels sit on steep lanes without pavements, so families often pick a hotel with a pool.

Both are fine without a car, and both rely on the same old, crowded Circumvesuviana line. Naples has more transport but more chaos. Metro Line 1 and four funiculars connect the centre with Vomero and Posillipo, but buses crawl in traffic and crossing the road takes nerve.

Sorrento's centre is small and flat, with a lift down to the marinas. Leaving it means summer buses crawling around the hairpins of the Amalfi road, or ferries, and hotels in the hills depend on shuttles or taxis.

Naples offers far more to shop for. It has generations of tailoring in the workshops of Chiaia, the high street of Via Toledo, the glass-roofed Galleria Umberto I, and nativity figures made all year on Via San Gregorio Armeno.

Sorrento's lanes are mostly lemon souvenirs, from limoncello to soaps and ceramics. Its two real crafts are wood inlay and leather sandals made to measure while you wait, and anyone after fashion goes to Naples or Capri.

Naples is clearly the cheaper base. Eating as Neapolitans do costs well below northern Italian levels, and the metro and funiculars cost little. The bills that add up are the entry fees at the big archaeological sites and the ferries out to the islands.

In Sorrento you pay for the view. A room facing the bay, dinner on a terrace, a sunbed on a pier lido or a private boat all cost far more than their equivalents in Naples, especially in summer. It is still easier on the wallet than staying on Capri or the Amalfi side: local trains and buses are cheap, family trattorias off the main squares are fairly priced, and hotels ask a good deal less in spring and late autumn.

Naples has the Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest opera house in Europe still in use, with a full season of opera, ballet and concerts. There are also concerts at the San Pietro a Majella conservatory and chamber music in the churches. Neapolitan song is still a living tradition in small theatres and trattorias.

Sorrento offers evening shows of song and tarantella staged for visitors, summer concerts in the cloister of San Francesco and singers in hotel bars. For anything bigger, you take the train to Naples.

Naples is no place to slow down, yet its volcanic ground gives it something Sorrento lacks: real thermal water, at the Agnano springs on the city's edge, used since Roman times. Otherwise, rest in Naples means a long lunch, an evening walk on the Lungomare or the quiet cloisters of Santa Chiara.

Sorrento's calm is gentler and comes from its setting: clifftop hotel spas, pools above the bay and the gardens of old villas. It is most restful in spring and autumn, since July and August crowd the centre. For a proper soak, the terraced thermal gardens of Ischia are about an hour by boat from either place.