Old, new and good Manchester

Eat

Unctuous lamb chops and real ale in the renovated art nouveau interior of Mr Thomas Chop House. Chase it with expert mixology in the bar of The Principal hotel – an elaborately reimagined 19th century insurance office.

See

Paintings by LS Lowry in the Whitworth Art Gallery: the artist’s utterly charming ‘stick people’ portraits of early 20th century Lancashire cityscapes are beloved by locals.

Visit

Salford Quays – a creative and media hub that the BBC now calls home. Nearby is The Lowry, home to a collection of the artist’s work, as well as a performing arts space.

Wander

The Northern Quarter – a red-bricked, formerly industrial jumble of design studios, coffee shops and bars, home to all the international staples of newly found hipsterism (you can’t move for beards, tattoos, plaid shirts and tea dresses), as well as vintage emporium Afflecks Palace and cult record store Piccadilly Records.

Sit

In Sackville Gardens – a small park near the Whitworth Gallery. Sitting on a bench is a life-size bronze of computer science pioneer Alan Turing, a professor at the University of Manchester, by sculptor Glyn Hughes. Dying in obscurity, Turing and his achievements were posthumously embraced: this was the man who helped crack the Enigma Code during the Second World War. He is now considered the father of modern computing. In Sackville Gardens, the sculptor’s original Amstrad machine is buried underneath the plinth that lies next to Turing’s genial looking statue.

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