Liverpool

Look lost in Liverpool and someone like Terry Allen is likely to appear at your elbow. He's one of a team of Navigators employed by Liverpool City Council. Want to see pre-Raphaelites art? The Walker Art Gallery is just by the station, and all its Victorian grandeur comes free. Anfield football stadium, home of Premier Division Liverpool Football Club? A ticket may be hard to get hold of, but anyone can go on a tour of the dressing rooms.

And the Beatles? Terry can not only show you where the Cavern was, he can tell you he saw John, Paul, George and Ringo perform when he was a teenager. Mathew Street is the hub of the Beatle experience. The pubs that they drank in are still there, along with a recreated Cavern Club (they used the original bricks) but in recent years the area has become Liverpool's centre for high fashion, with two shops, Drome and Cricket on the site of the Cavern itself. Also on Mathew Street is Wade Smith - three floors of designer finery that mixes Prada and Gucci with the hippest British labels, including Punk Royal and Fake London. It's just one of the reasons Tatler magazine - Britain's poshest - has dubbed the city Livercool.

Now set to become European Capital of Culture in 2008, Liverpool is a city bursting with energy and confidence. The Pan-American Club in Albert Dock is a stylish bar and restaurant, which features a breakfast martini - Cointreau, gin and marmalade.

Albert Dock is also home to the Merseyside Maritime Museum. This gives the background to the city's extraordinary wealth in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 'Transatlantic Slavery' the museum comes clean over Liverpool's role in the slave trade, with a reconstruction of a slave ship, which echoes to the voices of actors reading from the diaries of slaves and slave traders. This inhumane trade fuelled Liverpool's reputation as a port. Later, over 9 million people passed through the city, en route to new lives in America and Australasia. This wealth can be seen in the grandeur of the buildings, including St George's Hall, with its priceless Minton tiles, the Royal Liver Building (which is topped by statues of the mythical Liver birds) and the Walker Art Gallery, which opened in 1877.

Art has always been strong in Liverpool. Next year, the Liverpool Biennial will be held again. It's a three month showcase for some of the world's best conceptual artists, with hundreds of sites around the city. John Lennon and - more recently - David Gray went to Liverpool School of Art - but plenty of its graduates stay with design. The Bluecoat Centre, housed in a 17th century former school - Liverpool's oldest building, has studios, a tranquil garden, and, at the back a shop that sells one-off jewellery and ceramics. It shouldn't be missed.

Elsewhere, Bold Street has a caffeine-fuelled vibe, with the Soul Café, Utility home accessories and the new Fact Centre, a brooding black cuboid with live webcasts and art films. Nearby is Concert Square, a four-cornered drinking experience, part theatre, part earthy social swirl. But the stand-out pub in Liverpool is the Philharmonic, up on Hope Street - a traditional, and very grand watering hole, with mosaics, marble male toilets, and upmarket pub grub. In a city that has always been strong on music, Liverpool's nightlife is renowned. On Victoria Street, the Living Room has three levels to aspire to, from the ground floor restaurant, down to Mosquito in the basement and below to the even more subterranean and desirable Vampire Suite. Alternatively, on Water Street, there's Newz, where today's Liverpudlian pop stars, including the Atomic Kittens come to play in the screened-off booths, while a mural depicting the 1911 Liverpool General Transport Strike Committee looks down on them.

But to many, Liverpool will always be synonymous with the Beatles. Albert Dock has a permanent exhibition, The Beatles Story, and there's also a daily bus tour - naturally called The Magical Mystery Tour - which takes in Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields and the houses where the Fab Four grew up. Two of these - Mendips, where John Lennon grew up and 20 Forthlin Road, the childhood home of Sir Paul McCartney - are open to the public. They're run by the National Trust and although there are minibuses from Albert Dock, only a limited number of people are allowed in daily. But it's well worth booking places. Both have been redecorated in 1950s-style - John Lennon's boyhood bedroom was where he and McCartney wrote their first hit, Please, Please Me, while 20 Forthlin Road features a recorded interview with McCartney.