drains and uncollected trash, and the babble of tourists from around the world. Lisbon is not a museum, but the capital of a modern European state with all the issues facing big cities around the world. Despite the changes, travelers will discover a place of great beauty: laidback, welcoming, and affordable.
The history of Lisbon can be told in four landmarks. Let’s start with Castelo de São Jorge (p. 98), the city’s cradle, whose crenelated ramparts are immediately visible on one of the highest of the city’s shills. Humans have lived here since at least the 8th century b.c. Celtic tribes and Phoenician, Greek, and Carthaginian traders all had defensive outposts before Roman colonizers erected a fort to defend their seaport of Olisippo. After them came a succession of Germanic tribes, including the Christian Visigoths who ruled from their capital in Toledo for almost 150 years, before they were defeated by Muslim armies who swept in from North Africa and captured Lisbon in 714. Under Arab rule, the city spread down the hillside in the current neighborhoods of Alfama and Mouraria, whose narrow winding lanes still recall the medinas of North African cities. Remains of the Moorish fortifications (Cerca Moura) can still be seen today, but most of the medieval walls you see were built after the 1147 capture of the city by Portugal’s first king, Afonso I Henriques, with the help of crusaders from northern Europe. The siege of Lisbon was a turning point in the Reconquista wars, confirming Afonso’s leadership and setting the Christian forces on course for victory, although it would be another 100 years before they captured the whole of the country. In 1255, King Afonso III, grandson of the country’s founder, transferred the capital from Coimbra to Lisbon, and the castle became a royal residence. It was named after St. George (São Jorge) only in the 14th century, after King João I married an English princess, the legendary dragon-slayer being England’s patron saint.
Next up, the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, a symbol of Portugal’s Age of Discoveries. The 15th-century monastery is the city’s best example of the flamboyant Manueline style of architecture, named for King Manuel I who oversaw Lisbon’s transformation from a medieval town on the margins of Europe to the capital of a global empire. The man who perhaps did most to bring about that change lies buried inside: Vasco da Gama, who prayed on this spot the night before he left on the first sea journey from Europe around Africa to India. The Discoveries made Portugal rich and powerful, as Asian spices, African ivory, and Brazilian gold flooded into Lisbon. Long viewed as a golden age, the era is now questioned by historians given Portugal’s role in launching the Atlantic slave trade and European colonialism. Foreign travelers at the time were amazed at the variety of produce and people in Lisbon. By the mid-16th-century, estimates suggest, over 10% of the city’s population was black, both slaves and free. A visiting Flemish painter produced cityscapes showing Africans carrying out menial tasks, but also mixed-race couples dancing together and a black horseman in colors of the knightly Order of Santiago.
Manuel’s reign also saw the expulsion of Portugal’s Jewish community who had thrived in Lisbon since Roman and Arab times. Under pressure from Spain, in 1496 he ordered all Jews to convert to Catholicism or leave. Those who chose to stay were persecuted by the Inquisition. For more than 250 years, it tormented converts suspected of clinging to the Jewish faith and executed almost 500 people in autos-de-fé in Lisbon. A monument near Rossio square marks the spot where the Inquisition carried out its deeds. In 2019, the city council approved plans for a memorial to the victims of slavery on Lisbon’s waterfront.
Our third landmark is the vast riverside plaza officially named Praça do Comércio. Even when Portugal was in decline as a world power in the 18th century, its overseas territories continued to bring in riches, notably in the form of Brazilian gold, which financed the construction of lavish churches and palaces around the capital. It all came crashing down on November 1, 1755, when Lisbon was hit by a massive earthquake. Tremors were felt around Europe but it devastated the Portuguese capital, where it was followed by a tsunami and fire that left the city a gutted, charred shambles. Up to 90,000 were believed to have died. Cometh the hour, cometh the man: Prime Minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, better known as the Marquis of Pombal, took charge of the reconstruction efforts. He rebuilt downtown Lisbon along modern lines, inspired by the rational ideas of the Enlightenment. Praça do Comércio became the centerpiece of the new capital, with grand government buildings in an austere classical style that became known as Pombaline. From it runs a grid of straight streets and identical buildings making the Baixa district unlike the heart of any other European city. Informally, Lisbonites still refer to the square as Terreiro do Paço (Palace Yard) after the royal residence that stood there before the quake laid it low.
Pombal tried to modernize the country as well as its town planning, but his reforms were too little, too late. Left behind by the Industrial Revolution, Portugal entered the 19th century in deep decline. When Napoleon’s troops conquered Lisbon in 1807, the royal family escaped in the nick of time on British ships and transferred the capital to Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s independence and a civil war in the 1830s hastened Portugal’s decline.
In 1908 King Carlos II and his oldest son were assassinated in Praça do Comércio and 2 years later, a republic was proclaimed from the balcony of City Hall. More chaos followed until dictator António de Oliveira Salazar took power in 1932. He managed to keep Portugal neutral during World War II, when Lisbon became a nest of spies and a haven for refugees.
By the 1960s, however, Portugal was at war: Lisbon’s quaysides saw the tearful departure of troops ships headed for colonial conflicts in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau. Poor and isolated, Portugal was an outcast in democratic Europe. That began to change as dawn broke on April 25, 1974 to reveal armored cars and young soldiers taking up position in Praça do Comércio. The revolution launched by junior officers immediately won the hearts of Lisbon’s citizens, who took to the streets and decorated the soldiers’ guns with carnations from the flower stalls on Rossio. Portugal was set on the path to democracy.
The soaring towers and cutting-edge architecture of Parque das Nações symbolize modern Lisbon. The district was built to house the Expo ’98 World Fair, which drew 11 million visitors to the city on the 500th anniversary of Vasco da Gama’s arrival in India. It was a brash statement of a newly confident country. The new landmarks included Europe’s then-longest bridge, towering blocks of upscale apartments, shopping malls, exhibition halls, theatres, and a railway station designed by Spanish architectural superstar Santiago Calatrava. It embodied Lisbon’s transformation since the 1974 revolution. After some years of revolutionary turmoil, the country emerged as a stable parliamentary democracy. In 1986, it joined what would become the European Union, along with neighboring Spain. EU funds and foreign investment fueled an economic boom with new roads and infrastructure springing up around the country. The party had fizzled out by the mid-2000s and Lisbon, like the rest of Portugal, was hard hit by the world economic crisis. The capital, however, has been at the forefront of a recovery since 2015, with tourism and foreign investment fueling a booming property market.
Today, the city is the heart of an urban area that’s home to 2.8 million people. Its airport struggles to keep up with the demand for visitors flying in to enjoy its attractions. Neighborhoods in the old center that were once picturesquely rundown are spruced up with facades brightly painted or covered in new azulejos. The downside of the renewal is that those districts are losing their character. Residents are forced out as demand for vacation apartments pushes up rents; unique stores and cafes that have served neighborhoods for generations are replaced with souvenir shops and hipster watering holes that look like they’re transplanted from New York’s Williamsburg or London’s Shoreditch. Like in Prague and Barcelona, you’ll find old timers who’ll tell you Lisbon’s not what it was, but its sun-drenched beauty endures and, if you know where to look, there’s still charm aplenty in the streets and squares, along with marvelous museums, fabulous (and still affordable) food and wines, and amazing architecture for all tastes from early medieval to startlingly modernist.
Orientation
When to Visit
Lisbon is a year-round destination,
