AT THE mouth of a bay once teeming with famine ships, in a place once peopled with the no-hope sons and black-shawled mothers of deprivation, Ireland’s second city of Cork is undergoing a resurrection at a pace that has its citizens blinking.

This bursting-at-the-seams success story is about to be capped with a year-long party, thanks to Cork’s designation as the European Capital of Culture for 2005.

A convenient jumping-off point to the gorgeous coastal villages of Ireland’s southwest, Cork itself sits prettily within an amphitheatre of green hills, the downtown an island enfolded by the bifurcating branches of the River Lee. Sixteen bridges truss the place together, and one of the largest harbours in the world delivers a daily parade of cargo ships and trawlers to the docks — also earmarked for renewal.

Nowadays, the hills rising from the river are dotted with both venerable steeples and construction cranes. The whole mood is of a stage being set, in readiness for January 8, when the year-long Capital of Culture extravaganza starts. The Lee, cleansed at last by a massive drainage scheme, will erupt with geysers, dance to light shows and fireworks, and thud to sound systems. Choruses and dance troupes on both banks will play the moment to a crescendo before 30,000 spectators.

And that’s only prom night for the year-long festival of culture that will fill nearly every day of the calendar.

Events will feature Ireland’s native culture, with plays, traditional music sessions, literary readings, architectural tours, and exhibitions of both contemporary Irish art and ancient Gaelic artefacts — even a massive tribute to the deceased Cork rocker Rory Gallagher. But to highlight Ireland’s growing visibility on the international stage, the programme also includes many events with distant roots — Italian operas, French dance, Spanish guitar recitals, Chinese theatre, and for that matter, a “lesbian fantasy ball”.

Most Corkonians don’t know what the fuss is about. The natives regard the rest of Ireland as rather lacking in the key categories of laughter, storytelling, and singing in the kitchen until 3am. In their opinion, “The People’s Republic of Cork” has always been the spiritual capital of Ireland.

Now, great swaths of the city are undergoing a makeover, led by the transformation of Patrick Street, the main thoroughfare, into a grand promenade in the manner of Las Ramblas in Barcelona. In fact, a Catalan architect has overseen the £10 million project, bringing in granite from Spain and China, and brick from France for the intricately designed plazas, lanes, and walkways. Outdoor cafés are also springing up, offering a last refuge for the Irish smoker, now banned from puffing in every public building.

University College Cork has just opened a stunningly beautiful new art gallery, helped by an £8 million bequest from Louis and Loretta Glucksman, an American couple who traded in Wall Street’s riches for life in a nearby castle.

Cork is now a pedestrian’s dream. The town is a nattering maze of busker-serenaded lanes over what once was a marsh — that’s what Corcaigh means in Irish — where shoppers at posh Brown Thomas merrily sidestep a world-class collection of oddballs, chancers, and charmers.

“How are ye der boy!” is the local greeting, often cried out by residents ambling in front of buses.

When my family and I set up house by the Lee in the summer of 2000, Robbie, a Scotsman firmly ensconced in Cork, advised: “In most places, a person is valued for being straightforward and predictable. That is the worst way you can possibly behave here. In Cork, people are valued above all for being characters. You have to be odd to fit in.”

Just what my wife wants to hear, I thought. Of course, I was drinking in a pub that recently hosted a song-fest organised by a female midget in a red cummerbund and black bow tie. We had just arrived with three bewildered kids from staid Connecticut, where everything works on time, but people scarcely socialise or laugh or sing with the rambunctiousness that informed every Friday of my parents’ generation.

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