Beirut is within reach - there are now three direct flights from Nice Cote d'Azur. It's good - the two cities have a lot in common - from language to geography.  But there are also huge differences. Mention Nice and most people imagine a calm city on the Med - Beirut, also on the Mediterranean, is a little more complicated. The Lebanese capital brings forth views so diverse that it becomes difficult to gauge reality. This may be normal for a city with a 3000 year history, but if you're deciding whether or not to visit, it's a little confusing. Beirut has an image problem borne out of too many images.

Beirut gets three sorts of press. First there are those who describe the city in terms of its 1960s heyday. They remember it as the ‘Paris of the Middle East', a cauldron of unabated, oil-fuelled hedonism. The ‘Paris' tag has been used elsewhere; 1930s Shanghai, for example, was the ‘Paris of the East'. It's a descriptive title that usually disappears after some cataclysmic event.  Lovers of 60s Beirut will lament, with a shake of the head, that the city died when the war began in 1975. As if it were a glamorous, much loved, but ultimately tragic film star.

Then there are those who only see Beirut in terms of the war that ended twenty years ago and the more recent Israeli incursion. They do untold damage to the city's image with dated stories about western hostages and gun toting militias. Don't bother arguing with these people because they'll not hesitate to use limited geographical knowledge as a tool for mixing the entire Middle East into one violent cesspit. Beirut 2011 may as well be downtown Baghdad. Perhaps we've all unthinkingly used the phrase ‘It's Beirut out there!' to describe chaos or violence. It's an out-dated metaphor. But for these soothsayers, it's the truth. You will get killed in Beirut.

Finally, we have the ‘aficionados'. Prepared to do Beirut justice. They either live in the city or have visited recently. ‘Recently' is key because Beirut is rapidly changing, in both soul and form. It may not yet be the hedonistic paradise of the 1960s and early 70s, but it's back on its feet - young, vibrant and challenging for a ‘world's coolest city' title.

True lovers of Beirut will tell you the facts. Because facts are what serve to improve the city's image. That Beirut lies next to the Mediterranean Sea, beneath mountains that are snow clad in winter. Again, you have to think Nice (there's even a corniche). That it's a twenty-minute flight from Cyprus and feels as much a part of Europe as the Middle East. That downtown Beirut has undergone a huge, mostly tasteful renovation and boasts world-class hotels, swanky apartment blocks and a new financial district. That the former ‘green line', a no-mans land that once divided the city's warring factions, is now overlooked by a Virgin Megastore. That there's valet parking at McDonalds and that the traffic in Beirut is either stationary or like the Monaco Grand Prix. In fact, they'll tell you that Beirut has most things you'd expect from a modern city plus the best nightlife in the Middle- East.

At night, Beirut seriously kicks off. Apart from the food (Lebanese restaurants are popular worldwide, particularily here in France), the local desire to party has produced a spectacular club scene to rival that of any other city in the world. A typical Beirut night out might start with laid-back sounds at ‘Zinc', a lush palm adorned bar set inside a colonial villa, where the owner greets everyone as if they are a member of his own family. Then on to Monot street, heart of the city's club district, where you might get past the doormen and the Porches, into ‘Crystal'. Inside, Beirut's young and moneyed take delivery of magnums of champagne adorned with sparklers, before dancing, as the Lebanese love to do, on every table in the house. It's kitsch. But if you want a return to the pure unadulterated glam of the seventies, you need to visit a club like Cassino. Here, like actors on the set of a Lebanese James Bond film, men pose as heavily jewelled women swoon beneath a singer wearing impossibly tight trousers, pumping out Arab love songs. Pure, unintentional, retro - fantastic.

Venues like BO 18, however, belong firmly in 2011. This is perhaps the city's hippest club, alive with the ‘forget about tomorrow' attitude so prevalent in night time Beirut. BO 18 gets busy at around 3.am. Designed as a coffin, dug into the ground, it has a motorised sliding roof that opens occasionally to reveal (to those on ground level) a heaving dance floor. The club is built on the site of a former refugee camp. It's the war again but as you watch the DJs spin for the startlingly attractive young Lebanese (Muslim and Christian), it's easy to forget that most of them, even those whose families took them abroad, were affected by the conflict. The fact that they are dancing in a coffin might be interpreted as a form of mass trauma therapy, but actually it's nothing. It's just a club, a very good one and another sign that these Lebanese, at least, look to the future.

Foreign visitors should keep this in mind, because in a city like Beirut it's easy to become a war tourist. You look for the bullet holes scarring the older, French colonial buildings. You wonder at the former ‘green line' and imagine people scurrying to avoid the snipers. You question the locals about their experiences of war and above all, you gaze up at the bombed out shell that twenty-five years ago was the Holiday Inn (above), a monument to a violent past. There are plans to renovate this building but one can't help feeling that it should remain, as it is, a concrete reminder that the city must never turn back. Ironically, war renovations in other parts of Beirut have given access to parts of the city's rich history. Excavations, revealing sites from Phoenician, Roman and Crusader eras are now dotted around town, reminders of Beirut's inherent ability to reinvent itself.

Lebanon, of course, still has political problems to be solved. Israeli warplanes often fly over its southern borders. The Syrians still have a presence in the country. But it's encouraging that in Beirut the things that you criticise are the same as in most other cities around the world. Bad traffic, public transport, taxi drivers who seem to always overcharge you. There's also a shortage of budget accommodation and the rebuilt downtown area, still in relative infancy, has no real embedded community. It can seem soulless at times. These are real problems but should be measured against the ‘ground zero' situation from which the city evolved twenty years ago.

Beirut is trying to rebrand itself once again, after the invasion of 2006 and it deserves a chance. Forget it's reputation - this is one of the safest cities in the Middle East, especially for a Westerner and you are less likely to be a victim of crime in Beirut than in Paris or even Nice.

Look at the real positives. Where else, as the locals love to boast, can you ski in the morning and go to the beach in the afternoon, all within one hour of a city centre? Well, the Cote d'Azur.... but add to that a world class nightlife and you'll be glad that this ancient Phoenician city, former playground of the Middle East, has got its welcome signs out again. The phrase ‘it's Beirut out there' now means something entirely different.

Photographs by Michael Fiddler

Dubai - The Middle East just got closer with cheap direct flights from Nice How many times during the long winter months have I seen my other half smile and say: ‘It's raining! Know what that means?' READ MORE

Mr Nader, our own celeb crimper. Lebanese hair stylist Charbel Nader has lived and worked in Cannes for the last eight years. The 30-year-old Beirut-born coiffeur leads a glamorous life READ MORE

Great Moroccan food at Salama in St Tropez Moroccan food is generally the same anywhere you go: couscous, kebabs, mint tea - you know the drill. READ MORE