Beneath a rather leaden sky, I stood on the edge of the Jubilee Pool and gazed beyond its glacial Art Deco curves and high terraced walls towards St Michael’s Mount. There’s always something invigorating about an al fresco dip, but for outdoor swimmers this historic saltwater lido — the largest in the UK — is worth the trip to Penzance alone. It was closed in 2014 after being extensively damaged by a freak storm, but its grand reopening last month reflects a new energy in the town.

The last time I came here I was en route to the Isles of Scilly. The town was merely a transit point; my family had taken the train from London, getting off at Penzance, the end of the line, then walking the few hundred yards to the dock. We boarded the ferry and sailed away with barely a glance at the town.

For a long time this has been Penzance’s lot: overlooked in favour of gentrified, resort-feel destinations such as nearby St Ives, with its more upmarket shops, sweeping beaches and a Tate gallery. Many other visitors to Cornwall stop before they get this far west, heading instead to Newquay, Rock and Padstow, which have become ever more chichi, attracting crowds of visitors to their neat little seafronts filled with the restaurants and gastropubs of TV chefs such as Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver. Penzance has looked a little too “authentic” by comparison. And when the economic downturn struck in 2008, it suffered further: the high street here took a beating as shop after shop closed.

Yet a flurry of recent openings points to a turnaround. That authenticity, combined with an independent and entrepreneurial streak, seems to be attracting visitors looking beyond the polished honeypot towns and villages of north-east Cornwall.

The Jubilee Pool will be top of their to-do list. Dating from 1935, the unusual triangular lido was designed by local engineer Capt Frank Latham, who also designed lighthouses. It juts dramatically into Mount’s Bay from Penzance’s promenade, with the sea on two sides. The violent storm that struck in 2014 stripped the promenade of its paving and slammed the stones into the lido. In a £3m renovation project, 160 steel rods were driven through the pool floor into the bedrock to anchor it in place and the walls patched up and repainted.

On the morning of my dip, a few regulars from the Battery Rocks swimmers — a group of hardy outdoor types who take a daily dip in the sea off the lido rocks — were doing laps of the pool. Despite the lack of sun, the water was a pleasant 18C, although on warmer days it can get up to a positively balmy 20C. There are also plans for geothermal heating of part of the pool’s 2m gallons of water — which could extend its opening period beyond September, when it currently closes for the winter.

Behind the lido and the neighbouring lagoon-like harbour, where kids in wetsuits splash like seals each evening, lies Chapel Street, the town’s historic spine. Now Penzance’s most charming and buzziest street, it was here that Maria Branwell, mother of the Brontës, was born and is home to the Turk’s Head — the town’s oldest pub, dating back (some claim) to 1233, which once featured a smugglers’ tunnel running to the harbour. Further along the street stands the Egyptian House, a Landmark Trust property available to rent as a holiday home which dates from 1835 and has an exotic Egyptian-themed façade.

Ice cream comes in any flavour so long as it’s vanilla. The big decision is whether to add clotted cream

Chapel Street is also where you’ll find independent shops selling antiques, art and beauty products such as natural skincare by local brand Pure Nuff Stuff. But elsewhere in town, if you know where to look, there are also green shoots. Last month, Barry Sinton, who used to work for art publisher Thames & Hudson, opened Barton Books, specialising in art books for the large artistic community in the area. And at weekends, the Little Wonder café pops up on the western end of the prom serving hot and cold drinks and cakes from a vintage Elddis Mistral caravan.

Also on Chapel Street sits the popular Artist Residence, a hotel with a lively restaurant serving trendy barbecue food (beer-can chicken, pulled pork, mac’n’cheese) and a garden designed to recreate the atmosphere of a festival. A few yards away is the Abbey, which for more than 30 years was a hotel owned and run by the model Jean Shrimpton. Last year it reopened as an elegantly furnished self-catering rental house and is now run by Shrimpton’s son, Thaddeus Cox.

“Penzance is a bit more bohemian [than other Cornish destinations],” Cox tells me. “It has been hit by the recession but the more eclectic streets are full of character and businesses owned by local people. There’s definitely a movement to breathe life back into the town because people love it so much.”

It can have an effect on visitors too: before you know it, the place has got under your skin. My family and I were staying at Chapel House, a new six-bedroom boutique hotel in a restored Georgian house at the southern end of Chapel Street. It was built around 1790 by Admiral Samuel Hood Linzee, who fought at Trafalgar and captained the Temeraire (of Turner’s “Fighting Temeraire” fame). In 2013 the building was bought by Susan Stuart, a former City accountant. Stuart visited in 2012 for a few weeks and toyed with the idea of moving from London to live in a cottage on Chapel Street and work as a self-employed consultant. That was until Chapel House came up for sale. She fell in love with the place, bought it and, after two years of extensive renovation, opened the house as a hotel last summer.

Despite (or maybe because of) her lack of experience in the hospitality sector, Stuart has created a truly charming hotel decorated with a spare blend of antiques and mid-century modern design classics, situated in calm Georgian rooms flooded with sea light. The dining chairs are Danish, re-covered in green, blue and turquoise leather; the daybed in our room (on which my son slept soundly) was 1960s Ercol. Our room was up in the eaves, where a new glass extension above the stairwell gives an expansive view of the harbour and St Michael’s Mount in the distance.

“There’s a lot of interest in Cornwall at the moment,” says Stuart. “Some of the more popular places like Padstow, Newquay and St Ives have perhaps become less interesting because people know all about them. Penzance has a reputation for being a bit scruffy and down at heel but actually it’s really nice. We’ve got amazing independent shops, you don’t get much better views from any town — there’s a three-mile beach with views of a castle, which isn’t too bad. And it’s a hub for exploring for people who want to walk, swim and cycle.”

From Chapel House we set out to explore the town and surrounding Penwith peninsula, which stretches to Land’s End. Penzance provides a perfect base: St Michael’s Mount is five minutes’ drive away, St Ives and Porthcurno about 20 minutes. The later is a small village with a beautiful beach that was once the terminus of a network of undersea telegraph cables that stretched all the way to Bombay (there’s now a museum above the beach).

Cut into the clifftop close by is the dramatic open-air Minack Theatre. Basking sharks are often spotted here, and on our visit to the white sand, almost Caribbean-looking beach, families and lifeguards stood transfixed as a pod of dolphins played in vivid turquoise water.

For a similarly tropical feel we headed to the Tremenheere sculpture gardens, planted with palms, ferns and banana trees. We climbed up through the shady coolness of the lower parts of the garden, emerging near a stand of giant bamboo before reaching James Turrell’s Skyspace installation. Here, an underground domed chamber opens to the sky and you can watch clouds scudding in and out of view. Elsewhere in the garden there is work by David Nash and Richard Long and a camera obscura by Billy Wynter. It’s an enchanting spot, enhanced by views towards St Michael’s Mount and the broad bay.

Penzance is also starting to give its foodie neighbours a run for their money. On our second evening, we walked up Chapel Street to Bruce Rennie’s restaurant The Shore, which opened last year. Rennie cut his teeth working for Gary Rhodes and Rick Stein; his restaurant is a simple room where he works alone in the kitchen. From our table I could watch him frantically prepping and plating fresh seafood dishes such as mackerel with pickled cucumber and oyster mayonnaise, followed by lemon sole with squid ink linguine.

Ben Tunnicliffe, who held a Michelin star at The Abbey restaurant until 2008, opened the Tolcarne Inn in 2012. It’s a traditional Cornish pub tucked behind the sea wall, and its menu focuses on local seafood. We had a rich fish soup followed by crab, scallop, John Dory and asparagus linguine. Last year, Tunnicliffe opened his second restaurant in nearby Sennen Cove.

After lunch at the Tolcarne Inn, we popped round the corner for an ice cream from fabled local institution Jelbert’s: there you can have any flavour so long as it’s vanilla. The big decision is whether or not to add a flake or even a dollop of clotted cream. Go for both. You can always work it off in the lido.

Details

Carl Wilkinson was a guest of Visit Cornwall (visitcornwall.com), the Artist Residence (artistresidencecornwall.co.uk; doubles from £75) and Chapel House (chapelhousepz.co.uk; doubles from £150). Flybe (flybe.com) operates daily flights from London Gatwick and Manchester to Newquay. The Night Riviera Sleeper train (gwr.com) runs six days per week, leaving London at 11.45pm, arriving in Penzance just before 8am

Photographs: Mike Newman Photography; Alamy; Nick Hook