WHY GO TO VENICE WHEN YOU CAN GO TO BIRMINGHAM?

If canals stir the heart, they also boost the appetite. In Venice that means bacari, the cosy bars serving wine and cicheti bar snacks. Our upmarket equivalent is Selfridges’ Moët Bar, where several customers sport the suspicious sheen of footballers’ wives. It’s fast, convivial and has sensational homemade mushroom soup, followed by spinach, chickpea and avocado salad, washed down by Chianti. Magnifico. Truly magnifico.

The store, however, is about more than food and shopping. Far more. Next to its Italian rival, Birmingham has little iconic architecture. But in Selfridges – designed by the visionary Jan Kaplicky – it has a radical, startlingly contemporary masterpiece. The vast globular blue mass, sprinkled with 15,000 reflective discs, rears above the urban clutter like a super-sized bug’s eye, morphing and shifting in the chasing light.

We stare. And stare. It’s mesmerising. Yet Becca’s clearly not convinced of the city’s romantic charms. I need help from the heavens. Venice’s ace in a generously endowed pack, is the Basilica de San Marco, dominating the piazza that Napoleon dubbed the ‘drawing room of Europe’. Brum’s answer? St Philip’s Cathedral, surrounded by a square with a nice bit of Victoriana.

The British cathedral may lack the gold domes, 4,000sq metres of mosaics and looted treasures from Constantinople, but it’s still a baroque gem, laced with marble columns, decorative parapet urns and a striking bell tower. It reeks of Midlands’ modesty, not Italian flamboyance – the first Bishop of Birmingham chose an existing church over grand design, channelling the savings into his industrial flock.

We enter its galleried interior to find a lunch-break crowd listening to Canon Nigel Hand discuss Psalm 136. There’s none of St Mark’s smells, bells and hypnotic chanting, but it’s still marvellously serene.

The crowning glories are the east and west stained-glass windows by local boy, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, all blood reds, rich pinks and exquisite skin tones. Becca seems utterly entranced. At last, La Brumissima is working its magic.

Keen to drive home the potential of the city’s artistic heritage, we stroll to the nearby Museum and Art Gallery. I immediately do a double-take. To one side, linking the sturdy colonnaded façade to its 1911 extension is Birmingham’s reply to Venice’s Bridge of Sighs. Yes, it’s a tad lumpen, lacking the original’s delicate glass windows – but the influence is obvious. It continues inside. The museum has at least nine paintings of La Serenissima, including Francesco Guardi’s breathtaking Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana. Nearly there’s proof that Venetian master Canaletto travelled to the Midlands – his extraordinary draughtsmanship of Warwick Castle. And the magnificent industrial gallery explains the influence of Venice’s 16th-century glassmakers on British craftsmen, displaying vases by Union Works of Birmingham and Richardsons of Stourbridge. The museum's Edwardian tearooms with their ornate tiling, intricate friezes and huge conservatory roof are Brum’s reply to the cafes around St Mark’s Square.

Today, with just three customers, they’re no match for mirrored, stuccoed, frescoed Caffé Florian with its resident orchestra and past clientele including Goethe, Byron and Rousseau. Then again, the tearooms don’t charge ten quid for a hot chocolate.

Still, we arrive at Best Western Premier Moor Hall Hotel & Spa in Sutton Coldfield, a wood-panelled Edwarian pile built by a scion of the Ansells’ brewing dynasty, in my Fiat 500 – at least it’s Italian – and, after a solid night’s kip, wake to panoramic views of the wooded golf course.

Next day, Birmingham’s romantic flow continues with custard. The old Bird’s plant is now at the heart of dynamic 15-acre city-centre site of workshops and towering railway arches teeming with arty types, creative’s and live musicians, alongside indy retailers and budding entrepreneurs.

The latest building to be tarted up, Zellig – all light, bright and white – exhibits a doppelganger for ubiquitous cherubs in Venice’s Renaissance frescoes. The sculpture, the portliest of seven male nudes suspended in midair, is modelled on a naked Clive Dunn from Dad’s Army. Take that, Pietro Lombardo.

It’s not the only similarity between the cities, both need to hark back to past glories. Venice for tourist euro and Birmingham – through small business hubs such as Zellig – to its days as the ‘City of 1,000 Trades.’

One has never gone away. The Jewellery Quarter – the equivalent of Murano glassworks – might be past its peak but still employs 2,000 people. They produce and sell 40 per cent of the country’s handmade jewellery in an area of 200 listed buildings spanning three centuries, peppered with restaurants, pubs and cafes.

We amble past the old (Thomas Fattorini, 1827) and the new (Diamond Heaven), bathing in the warm light of history before ending at the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, where the workshops of Smith and Pepper have been pickled in aspic, tools still on benches, since the company closed its doors in 1981.

‘It’s one of the most romantic parts of Birmingham,’ says guide, Clive Heeley, who has worked in the trade since 1976. ‘Not only because people come for engagement rings, but because of the sense of community. Its changing but there used to be a fantastic camaraderie. Everybody trusted everybody.’

It’s an idyllic past I’m happy to exploit to underline Brum’s credentials as a city of love. I take Becca to Vittoria Street where we gaze at a magnificently solid building with a cool brick and glass extension. ‘The School of Jewellery,’ I explain. ‘My grandmother was a student in the 1920s. Grandpa collected her here every day when they were courting.’ Becca’s eyes look suspiciously watery – as do mine – and for once it’s nothing to do with the weather.

In Venice, we’d toast their memory with an overpriced Bellini at Harry’s Bar. Not today. Instead we head to the Old Joint Stock, overlooking the cathedral, a strikingly beautiful pub, hewn from Grade II listed banking hall dating back to 1864.

‘Can you do a Bellini?’ I ask the waitress.

‘Nah. What’s that. A cocktail?’

‘Prosecco and peach juice.’

‘Ooof, two of my favourites. Sorry. You prefer a pint?’

So no Bellinis for us, then. But instead we had pints and homemade pies. Pies of the type that Venice can only dream about.

More Things To Do In Birmingham

If you're looking for more inspiration for a short city break, take a look at our guide of what to do in Birmingham where you'll find details of more things to do, great shopping, eating and drinking, culture and nightlife, plus details of all Best Western Birmingham hotels.