Manchester

Blame it on the Beckhams, put it down to the cocktails and Cold Feet generation or Rocco Forte and Marco Pierre White. Point the finger where you like, but make sure you do it with great refinement because Manchester, the ’humdrum town that drags you down’, has taken its place as the new social epicentre of the North.

Forget Royal Ascot, Henley, Glyndebourne, guns and grouse. Stiff card invitations to Trafford Park, Salford Quays and Deansgate are decorating all the right mantelpieces these days. Even the Queen and the rest of the royal family headed north to round off her golden jubilee celebrations in the summer of 2003. The royals joined the hat-wearing classes who had already been out celebrating the Commonwealth Literature Festival and the opening of two museums - the first branch of the Imperial War Museum outside the South East, and Urbis, a £30 million exhibition that reminds us why Manchester has so much to answer for.

Manchester – city of miserable songwriters, gobby kids, Jim Royle and smudgy rain – has scrubbed up well and is busy welcoming its posh new guests. The Lowry, the city’s first five-star hotel and pied a terre for the Spice Girls during their recent string of concerts at the MEN Arena, opened in 2001 and has been followed by a host of luxurious wannabees. There are shops to die for - Hermes, Hilfiger, Mulberry, Calvin Klein. Restaurateurs, including Raymond Blanc, are busy convincing diners there is more to the Manchester diet than a pint of Boddingtons ’with a Flake in it, love’.

How has the capital of alternative ’cool’ succumbed to monied, mainstream glam? It started with its bid for the 2000 Olympic Games. Though Manchester didn’t stand a chance against Sydney, the experience - and the metropolitan sniggering at its failure - left a valuable legacy. ’We realised we could handle big projects and we decided to get up on our hind legs and tell the rest of the country, "Stuff you, we’re doing it on our own",’ says local writer Phil Griffin.

And how well Manchester has done it. While London struggled to build a new national stadium, the £90m Commonwealth Games Arena, a metallic, tented structure, rose in east Manchester, transforming a landscape that was once as grim as a Lowry painting. Over the water in Trafford Park lies Britain’s answer to Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum - the sweeping, silver-tiled curves of the Imperial War Museum North. Rising like an iceberg in the city centre is Urbis, a Pompidou centre of the North, devoted to celebrating Manchester and other great world cities.

It is 12 years since an IRA bomb ripped out the heart of the city and Manchester has never looked so good - reversing the trend for anyone who was anyone to move out to Knutsford, Wilmslow or Alderley Edge. Derelict Victorian warehouses have become affordable homes for those in the social stratosphere.

Restaurateurs and retailers have followed the beautiful people. Sir Terence Conran chose Manchester to open Zinc in 2001, his first stand-alone restaurant outside London. Supporting him are a plethora of those who follow the money.

Local boy and fashion designer Matthew Williamson - who has dressed Kylie’s bum among others- is backing stylish boutiques and Harvey Nichols and Selfridges have opened, giving Manchester a new crown as the style capital of the north. The place is so hip, Robbie Williams - an honorary ’Manc’ after his Take That days - even performs Tina Turner’s ’Nutbush City Limits’ as ’Knutsford City Limits’ in praise of the town.

It’s a far cry from the Manchester depicted in 24 Hour Party People, Michael Winterbottom’s film of the Eighties music scene in which Tony Wilson, the boss of Factory Records who discovered Joy Division and set up the ’rave’ club, the Hacienda, says he wants to change the way Mancunians think, ’like in Renaissance Florence’. ’But this isn’t fookin’ Florence,’ a friend replies. ’It’s Dark Ages Manchester.’

Manchester has bought itself a bright new future - and now we all want a part of it. The city feels like Glasgow during its 1990 Year of Culture, when ’big man’ Pavarotti performed on the Clyde and everyone agreed No Mean City was ’miles better’. We flocked then and now we’re about to do it again.

Go there, party, and, whatever you do, remember the old Manchester saying: ’It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at.’

Getting to Manchester

Avoid the M6 and M62 at peak times, otherwise it is easy to drive into Manchester, but parking can be hard to find and expensive when you do.

The train is probably best, especially on Saturdays and Sundays when booking in advance can secure returns for around £20, upgrading to first class for another tenner. National Rail Enquiries 08457 484950. www.nationalrail.co.uk.

If you must fly, all domestic airlines have connections to Manchester airport which is 25 minutes from the city centre.

Getting around Manchester

Leave the car. Buses and trams take you anywhere you want in the city centre. Wayfarer passes - £8.80 per day adult - let you travel on all public transport. Ask your hotel where you can buy a pass, telephone Travel Line Manchester on 0871 200 2233 or visit www.gmpte.com.

To reach the Imperial War Museum take a cab. They’re cheap. Get out at the Lowry arts complex and walk over the curved bridge to the museum. Take the tram back into town and admire the Blade Runner -like landscape of Trafford and the Bridgewater Hall. Some of the seats on the tram spin like fairground waltzers.

If you only do five things:

1. Visit the Imperial War Museum North. When Daniel Libeskind, the award-winning Polish-American architect behind Berlin’s Holocaust Museum, designed the first branch of the museum outside the South East he smashed a glass globe and set about creating a structure from the shards ’to represent the world shattered by conflict’. From the sharp lines and trigger-shaped windows on the outside to the sloping floors and red strip lights slashed into the ceiling on the inside, the museum cleverly threatens and disorientates visitors.

There are the usual guns, tanks and planes but the hardware is offset by personal exhibits - diaries, letters, tape recordings, films projected on to the walls and the floor, clothes, toys, food - that illustrate the social effects of war. Don’t leave without climbing to the top of the ’air shard’ and opening the pill-box-style steel hatches in the walls to look back at the city and the Pennines beyond.

Imperial War Museum North, Trafford Wharf Road, Trafford Park, Manchester (0161 836 4000) www.iwm.org.uk. Open daily 10 am-6 pm (5 pm November - February). Admission free.

2. Go to Urbis. Another museum, another £30m, but again it has been well spent. Rising like a giant glass ski-jump in the city centre, Urbis is the first museum of the city. The curved glass structure - 2,200 individually sculpted panes - rivals Cornwall’s Eden Project and Tate Modern as Britain’s best modern building.

Inside, a glass funicular takes you 100ft to the top of four floors that slope down in front of you like the keys of a giant typewriter. You can experience life in cities around the world, from the wind and rain of Manchester, to the hum of helicopters above the grid-locked traffic in São Paulo, to the nocturnal work of a graffiti artist whose canvas is the walls and pavements of Paris. Go to the top-floor restaurant Le Mont, and gaze at the wondrous vistas of Salford.

Urbis, Cathedral Gardens, Manchester (0161 907 9077). www.urbis.org.uk. Admission Free.

3. Visit the Royal Exchange - the biggest room in the world when it was built 150 years ago to house the city’s cotton traders. Remind yourself that 75 per cent of the world’s cotton goods once came from the North West, and Manchester was the wealthiest place on the planet. Recall the price that workers in the dark Satanic mills paid by walking across the city centre to Chetham’s Library where Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. The Royal Exchange, St Ann’s Square (0161 833 9833). www.royalexchange.co.uk. Admission free.

4. Walk around the Northern Quarter - Manchester’s ’left bank’, where Victorian textile factories and warehouses have been converted into music and clothes shops, galleries and cafes.

Follow the music trail - Manchester’s answer to Hollywood’s walk of fame, with bands’ names immortalised on paving stones. You start with Sixties bands, such as The Hollies and Herman’s Hermits, carry on through The Fall, Joy Division and Happy Mondays, to today’s answer to Factory Records - Twisted Nerve.

5. Step into the lobby of the Britannia Hotel and go back 30 years to a time when chandeliers were huge, we danced in discotheques, and fine dining meant ’succulent meats and cosmopolitan dishes’.

The place is retro heaven. The carpet, which covers the walls as well as the floor, is all royal blue and gold swirls. Climb the baroque balconied stairwell that sweeps up around the 15ft-wide cut glass chandelier and admire the burgundy leather Chesterfield sofas and faux Ming vases on each landing.

Book a table in the hotel’s un-French-sounding French restaurant - Cromptons. It once promised (unforgettably) ’Exquisite French Quisine in an intimate atmosphere’. Britannia Hotel Manchester, Portland Street (0871 222 0017).

Don’t even think about...

Going to a shopping centre. The beige-tiled Arndale may have survived the IRA bomb but that doesn’t mean you should go there - even for a joke. The same goes for the Trafford Centre - Lakeside with a Cheshire accent.

Asking to buy the burnt orange Olga Polizzi-designed chaise longue in your bedroom at the Lowry Hotel. Yes, it is lush and would look great next to your Eames chair but remember a) you’re not that cheap and b) it’s not for sale.

Trying to compete with the locals on Eighties pop trivia. Can you remember every track on the B-side of A Certain Ratio’s first 12in single? They can. Say you enjoyed 24 Hour Party People but were ’sad that the Stone Roses were left on the cutting room floor’ and move on fast.

Shopping in Manchester

Mancunians wear their new-found wealth. Forget the parka, the city is second only to London in the number of designer shops, including Hermes, Armani Collezioni, Vivienne Westwood, Mulberry, Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger stores. Harvey Nichols and Selfridges beckon from Exchange Square. For mainstream shops - Jigsaw, Molton Brown, Muji, Space NK - head for the Triangle. King Street has the upmarket labels.

For street style and the club scene, buy local labels Schindler, Hooch and Bench in Westworld, 59 Church Street (0161 839 5252).

For food, head for Eccles, find the old Parker Bradburn bakery (now Hampsons, 0161 789 2321), where you can buy Manchester’s answer to sachertorte - the Eccles cake.

Behaving badly

Do ’the Angus Deayton’. Go to the Sugar Lounge, in Deansgate Lock’s railway arches. Order a bottle of pink champagne and wait until a bottle-tan blonde from Cheadle Hulme introduces herself. Offer her a drink, flirt and suggest a ’night out’. Head for Manchester’s hippest club - the 5,000 sq ft One Central Street, run by Leroy Richardson, of Hacienda fame. Admire the ’peep show chic’ - lip gloss pink walls, textured rubber surfaces, bare red light bulbs and U-shaped booths. Dance to DJs Alix Walker and Xander before suggesting ’a nightcap’ at Malmaison. Don’t forget to order your copy of the News of the World for the morning after.

One Central Street, 1 Central Street, Manchester M2 5WR www.onecentralstreet.co.uk.(0161 211 9000)

Restaurants in Manchester

Fast and filling: Love Saves the Day ,345 Deansgate, Manchester (0161 834 2266) Owned by Chris Joyce, formerly Simply Red’s drummer, this city centre deli and cafe/bar specialises in Italian and Spanish organic meats, fish and vegetables. Snack in or take away. Buy some of its gamey Northern Quarter Blend coffee. Lunch for two with wine costs about £25.

A safe bet: Zinc Bar and Grill, The Triangle, Exchange Square (0161 827 4200) Terence Conran’s first stand-alone bar and restaurant outside London. Great bar, especially between 6 pm and 9 pm. Familiar Conran food. A two-course meal with wine costs about £25 a head. Good value.

Totally sinful: The Restaurant Bar and Grill, 14 John Dalton Street (0161 839 1999) www.therestaurantbarandgrill.co.uk. Lounge 10, 10 Tib Lane (0161 834 1331). www.lounge10manchester.co.uk.

Sup cocktails at the Restaurant Bar and Grill, where you’ll spot Manchester’s beautiful types. Walk round the block to Lounge 10 for dinner. Vivienne Westwood designed the Edwardian-style loos. Dinner for two, with wine, £80.

Manchester Hotels

Budget: Manchester Travel Inn Metro, The Circus, 112-114 Portland Street (0870 238 3315). Unusually centrally located for a budget hotel, with 225 modern bedrooms, bar and restaurant. All rooms have en suite bathrooms and telephone. Rooms from £62 per room per night .Buffet Breakfast £7.50.

Mid-range: Malmaison, Piccadilly, Manchester (0161 278 1000). Like all hotels in the chain it is great value for money. Each room has its own CD player and wood-panelled bathrooms. Great lobby bar and French brasserie. It’s £180 per room per night during the week but look out for weekend offers. Continental breakfast is £11.95, full English £13.95.

Luxury: The Lowry Hotel, 50 Dearmans Place, Chapel Wharf, Salford (0161 827 4000). www.thelowryhotel.com. Manchester’s first five-star hotel is the hotel equivalent of Urbis - all tasteful glass, steel and wood minimalism. Spoil yourself with a detoxifying sea-algae wrap and back, face and scalp massage in the hotel spa, followed by Martinis in the bar and dinner in the Marco Pierre White River Room. If even that’s too Ship Canal for you, hire the Charles Forte suite where a butler will serve you dinner. Rooms from £200 a night.

Excursions from Manchester

Have a WAG’s day. Ask your hotel to hire you a convertible - preferably something in metallic lilac, registration 5CORE. Put on your Gucci shades - even if it’s pouring - and drive out to Alderley Edge. Hang Louis Vuitton baubles on the gates of Wayne and Colleens home and head off for London Road the latest venture of celebrity chef Paul Heathcote. Drink chardonnay, admire the facelifts of the Wilmslow wives and spend the afternoon browsing at the make-up counter. London Road, 46 London Road, Alderley Edge, Wilmslow (0871 960 6013) www.heathcotes.co.uk.

What the tourist board doesn’t tell you.

It really does rain a lot and the raindrops are the size of gobstoppers, so take wet-weather clobber.

You will not be able to buy a ticket for a Manchester United home game. If you’re a fan, try the Theatre of Dreams museum at Old Trafford instead. If not, there’s always Manchester City...

Everyone will call you ’mate’ even if you are a woman and/or they hate you.