Ten city breaks with a seriously good beach attached

The city break and the beach holiday pretend to be opposites — one is queues and galleries, the other is horizontal. The cities below refuse to choose. In each, a genuinely good beach sits on the metro map or a short ride from the old town, which changes the shape of a weekend entirely: culture until lunch, salt water until dinner. Pack one bag with both lives in it and stop compromising.

Barcelona's beaches were built for the 1992 Olympics and the city has never looked back: four kilometres of sand start where the old fishing quarter of Barceloneta ends, ten minutes from the Gothic cathedral by metro. Do Gaudí in the morning, swim at four, vermouth at seven. Locals head slightly north to Bogatell for elbow room. May, June and September are the sweet months.

No city integrates the ocean like Sydney. Bondi is the icon — surfers, sea pools, the coastal walk to Coogee that might be the world's best free attraction — but ferry-reached Manly arguably beats it, and harbour coves like Shark Beach hide in the eastern suburbs. Museums, bridge climbs and opera fill the mornings; the Pacific owns every afternoon. Summer runs December to February.

In Rio the beach isn't near the city; it is the city. Life migrates daily to Copacabana and Ipanema's numbered lifeguard posts, each with its own tribe, its own coconut sellers, its own football games at dusk. Between swims there's Sugarloaf by cable car, Christ the Redeemer by rack railway and samba until late. Go December to March for full heat, or shoulder months for gentler crowds.

La Concha is routinely called Europe's best city beach and the claim survives inspection: a golden shell-shaped bay held between two green headlands, with a belle-époque promenade running its full length. The old town behind holds more Michelin stars per square metre than almost anywhere on earth — though the pintxos bars are the real religion. Swim, eat, stroll, repeat. September is perfection.

The capital of the Riviera arranges itself around the Baie des Anges, where the famous blue chairs of the Promenade face water of a blue no filter improves. The beaches are pebble — buy the cheap mat everyone else has — and the swimming is glorious into October. Between dips: the Matisse and Chagall museums, the baroque old town, and socca eaten hot from paper.

Lisbon keeps its beaches just out of sight: twenty minutes on the coastal train from Cais do Sodré, past pastel suburbs, to Carcavelos — a broad Atlantic sweep with surf schools, seafood shacks and a sixteenth-century fort at one end. Bigger ambitions ride the ferry and bus to the wilder Costa da Caparica. Custard tarts travel well; eat them on the sand with the fort in view.

South Beach is the rare famous beach that over-delivers: genuinely wide white sand and warm Atlantic water, backed by the pastel Art Deco district that turns every street corner into a film set. Culture has caught up with the tan lines — Wynwood's murals, the Pérez museum, Little Havana's cafecito windows. Winter is the season: dry, sunny, twenty-five degrees while Europe defrosts.

Few cities can follow a morning of galleries and markets with an afternoon on sand this glamorous. Clifton's four granite-boulder coves and Camps Bay's palm-lined sweep sit fifteen minutes from the centre, with the Twelve Apostles ridge glowing behind the sunbathers. The Atlantic side is famously icy — swimmers head round to Muizenberg on warmer False Bay. Summer, December to March, is beach season; book the Table Mountain cable car for late afternoon and watch the coast turn gold.

Tel Aviv's entire western edge is beach — fourteen kilometres of it, laced together by a promenade running from the old port down to Jaffa's Ottoman lanes. Each stretch has a personality: matkot paddles cracking at Gordon, surfers at Hilton, dogs with their own dedicated sand. Between swims there's Bauhaus architecture, a ferocious food scene and museums to spare. The sea stays warm from May to October; Friday afternoon, as the whole city exhales, is the moment.

The Athens Riviera is the city's best-kept open secret: the coastal tram and buses run from the centre past a string of bays to Vouliagmeni, where pine-fringed coves, beach clubs and a thermal lake do a convincing island impression forty minutes from the Acropolis. Do the Parthenon at opening time, swim by noon, then eat grilled fish in a seaside taverna as the sun drops into the Saronic Gulf. May, June and September give island-warm water without the August exodus.