There are good reasons why more and more retirees are skipping age-restricted ersatz villages in favor of college towns, the same reasons families and young professionals are making that choice. They have ready access to libraries and art galleries, audit classes and sit in on lectures, attend concerts and theatrical productions, root for the college athletic teams, take advantage of both inexpensive eateries and the event restaurants to which students inevitably take their visiting parents. Most of all, they are invigorated by the vitality and enthusiasm of young people charging into the rest of their lives.

Seeing

Yale University and its hometown New Haven admirably fulfill - exceed - that range of opportunities. Among the diversions they tender are two world-class art repositories, the Yale Center for British Art (www.yale.edu/ycba) and the Yale University Art Gallery (www.artgallery.yale.edu). The former numbers within its collection works by Gainsborough and J.M.W. Turner; the latter, notable French Impressionists and 19th Century American realists. Both are two blocks from the historic New Haven Green. So, too, are the admired Yale Repertory Theatre (www.yalerep.org), with its eight-month season of classical and contemporary plays, and the Shubert Performing Arts Center (www.shubert.com), which mounts a mixed program of traveling plays, musicals, concerts, cabarets, one-night solo acts, and touring dance troupes. The well-regarded Long Wharf Theatre (www.longwharf.org) is a not-for-profit famed for producing plays that not infrequently make the leap to Broadway.

Staying

A visit to New Haven is enormously enhanced by a stay at the distinguished new boutique hotel by the unusual name The Study at Yale (www.studyhotels.com). The founder, who has considerable expertise in the lodging business, came up with the knack-y notion of developing a hotel that affiliated itself with an elite adjacent university. (There is a rumor that the concept will next be applied to Georgetown University.) In a city otherwise served by national hotel and motel chains known to aspire to competence and produce yawns, The Study strives to do nothing wrong. It succeeds.

Reception is by sparkly young women who move tired arriving guests swiftly along to their rooms. Bedrooms are equipped with the expected flat-screen TVs, WiFi and Internet access and unexpected iPod docks and buttery leather chairs with hassocks. Beds eschew the rock-hard ironing board norm in favor of mattresses that gently embrace the body cover warm feather comforters. Stylish contemporary lamps actually aid, not hinder, the reading of the real books occupying the shelves. Spring for one of the junior suites they call “studies” and you get a alcove sitting room with two of those chairs and picture windows looking out over the close-in peaked slate roofs of the Old Campus.

Back at the front desk, the attendants not only happily provide information about current university events but hand out free tickets to Yale games and Yale Rep productions. The lobby has ample seating for small meetings, a wall of books, and a computer for those without laptops (although most guests have their own). Urns of free coffee are available each morning. After they empty out around 8:00am, there is a counter around a corner from the reception desk where fruit and breakfast pastries can be purchased along with  made-to-order cappuchinos.

The in-house dining room Heirloom (see below) achieved instant equality with New Haven’s best restaurants, but keeps prices within reason. The exercise room is open 24 hours. Rack rates start at $269, but you should be able to get a room for less, except during university events like football games, graduation and parent and alumni weekends.

Eating

New Haven is noted among foodies and avid eaters for the claimed (probable) invention of the hamburger sandwich and (possible) American pizza. The little brick building that houses Louis’ Lunch (www.louislunch.com) is the same one where the original Louis formed the first beef patty, broiled it in a gas oven, and served it on white toast with tomato, cheese, or onion.  They do it the same way today, and catsup is still not available.

New Haven pizza is more complicated. It’s formed in shapes that have little resemblance to the perfect circles of the corporate mass-feeding pizzerias, the crust so thin you can all but read a magazine through it. Dozens of local places slide out their versions every day, but the acknowledged leaders are Frank Pepe (www.pepepizzeria.com), Sally’s (www.sallyapizza.com) and Modern Pizza (www.modernpiza.com). The arguments about whose pizza is best is neverendingly contentious.  My choice: Modern.  So there.

At the more elevated end of the local dining experience, there are ever more possibilities for exotic and/or epicurean satisfactions. Among the established venues are Bespoke (www.bespokenewhaven), whose contemporary takes on staples of the fluid New American category place it among the state’s best. Ibiza (www.ibizanewhaven.com) has progressed from tapas bar to a showcase for modern Spanish cooking. Pacifico (www.pacificony.com) explores the similar yet varied cuisines of the South American west coast, spiked with invention. Bentara (www.bentara.com) does the same for Malaysia, which brings together French, Thai, and Vietnamese cuisines. Union League Café (www.unionleaguecafe.com) occupies the building of a grand 19th Century men’s club but combines an updated, largely-French menu with unusually polished and knowledgeable service.

For years, the Union League Café singlehanded held aloft the highest local standards of culinary achievement, but for over a decade it has had to share that position with Zinc (www.zincfood.com). Now, even with more competition, this sleek, cosmopolitan bistro with a Manhattanesque simmer shines as brightly as ever in the New Haven night. The interior is shiny dark minimalism with an eponymous zinc-topped bar in front that looks across Chapel Street to the Green. That’s a good spot to hitch up for a drink and a selection from the appetizing short menu (order carefully, for these “small plates” are almost the same size as the entrées in the dining room. Back there, service is precise and as informative as you might require, without hovering. Banquettes run along the walls, with plenty of elbow room between tables.

The owners may refer to their creations as “Modern American”, but they skip blithely around the globe for inspiration, most notably to Asia. They like spicy, too, as with the appetizer of toasted bread cubes with a peppery Indonesian sambal dipping sauce and the main course hanger steak with tomato aioli tinged with the North African condiment, harissa. That tender cut of beef also comes with black beans and a honey-sweet potato mash, rightfully a customer fave. Ask around and learn that lobster risotto and the smoked duck nachos are at the top of that list as well.  Always current with diners’ concerns, the kitchen bows to the local-organic-sustainable mantra, perhaps most noticeably with the summertime vegetable paella. Much attention is also given to the cheese card and there are thirteen wines available by the glass. This fall, the management jumped into the pizza pool with Kitchen Zinc (www.kitchenzinc.com) , an artisanal pizza parlor and bar down the alley to the right of the main door. It was a instant hit, no easy feat in this pizza-mad town, but these are truly pies of highest order. Where else will you see pizzas with such central toppings as gravlax, broccoli rabe, sopressata, and pancetta. Zinc is open for lunch Tuesday through Friday, for dinner every night.

It isn’t that Heirloom, the restaurant of The Study at Yale Hotel, strikes out for the far reaches of culinary exploration. It’s that they do every item on their largely comfort food menu so devastatingly well.  The mac-and-cheese, crab cake, and crunchy but lightly fried whole belly clam appetizers are supernal renditions that shove most other efforts deep in the shade. Padded leather chairs in a light-filled room with polished wood floors and a building-wide window looking out at Chapel Street submerge any lingering memories of the dismal hotel and restaurant that preceded this one. Patrons at both lunch and dinner tend to be members of the professoriate and conference attendees. But to encourage students to drop by and dilute the solemnity, Heirloom dreams up such promotions at $5 burgers and $4 beers to attract crowds to football nights. On other evenings, the menu turns a little more ambitious. You may think you know sea scallops, but probably not with this amalgamation of pea purée, mission figs, and balsamic glaze. Hotel restaurants just aren’t this much fun, with the added benefit that it’s open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

New Haven is stifling past depictions of urban malaise. Try a weekend.

Tags: British art, Frank Pepe, Hotel Study at Yale, Long Wharf, Louis Lunch, New Haven pizza, Yale, Yale Repertory