Lisbon Neighborhoods

The  Lisboa Metropolitan Area is home to around 2.9 million people, with  around 550,000 in the city of Lisbon. So there are lots of neighborhoods. But tourists mainly congregate in 13 areas.

(BUY-sha): From the must-sees Rossio train station in the north to Praça Comercial in the south, Baixa is the place to buy cork postcards and Ronaldo jerseys while being  mostly gently invited by friendly hawkers to sit for a drink or lunch.  Here the restaurants - many under shade on the sidewalk - have menus in every language offering real authentic Portuguese food. 

Gotta walk it, gotta love it, wouldn't stay here, wouldn't eat here. Like Alfama, too blatantly touristy.

(ava-KNEE-da leeber DAHD): This is a great area for stays. Ave Liberdade is Lisbon's wide, tree-lined luxury shopping district, home to many  fine hotels, the Metro running beneath the street, frequent buses, and  just enough distance from Baixa to reduce the hordes to a pleasant  tourist buzz. 

At the far north, around the traffic circle just below  Parque Eduardo VII is the Marquês de Pombal area, home to many hotels, perhaps the best transportation hub in the city, and the mega schwnaky Ritz / Four Seasons.

(ahl-FA-ma): Every day three to four cruise ships unleash their passengers into the southern end of Alfama for a day of wandering the hilly, colorful, quintessential Lisbon  old-old town. Super fun to wander, climb the hills to the castle, relax  with a "bica" (Lisbon espresso), and Instagram away. 

But we wouldn't  stay there. Too many tourists, ground zero for the negative effects of  too many AirBnBs (and the resulting local backlash, anywhere and  everywhere in tourist Europe); too far from multiple modes of public  transport; and too damn hilly at the end of a long day tromping all over the  place.

(buy-ROO alt / she-AH-doo): This is a tricky one because while grouped on the map, these are entirely different experiences. 

Chiado,  to the east and centered at Praça Luis de Camoēs, has perhaps the  highest concentration of fine and interesting restaurants and shops in  the city. It is very central, very well served by tram, Metro, bus, and  tuktuk, and if one was buying a place, considered  "upscale". There is no shortage of tourists in Chiado - in fact much of the time it is jam  packed - but it somehow feels less cliched than Baixa and less gawky  than Alfama. Chiado: recommended. 

Bairro Alto,  to the west, on the other hand, is for nightlife. It's impossibly small  cobbled streets host countless tiny bars and restaurants, spilling more  and more into the street the more joyously the later it gets. Highly  recommended for dining, people watching, and drinking; highly not  recommended for sleeping. 

One evening we descended the huge escalator  into the Chiado Metro station (the closest to Bairro Alto) around 10:30  pm as a stream of perhaps one million young people, local teenagers  through 20-somethings, dressed as though they were headed to a casting  call for a music video, flounced and joked and stampeded, in the most  leisurely way, the other direction toward Bairro Alto. They all had the  same look on their faces: "we are gonna have some FUN tonight!" 

I  find the Cais do Sodré area to be pleasant during the day near the  river, great for biking or strolling, and unpleasant one block inland,  where more graffiti than usual graces grayer than usual buildings set close enough together to keep out the nasty sun, even at mid-day. 

Cais  do Sodré is home to "Pink Street" (the red circle with the "a" in it, on the map,  an actually pink-colored street hosting, apparently, some of the most  boisterous and hard partying bars in the city. I don't know because we  haven't been at night, and don't plan to. The whole area is kind of  nasty, and is highlighted by travel books and local bloggers as one of  the few places in the tourist geosphere one shouldn't walk alone after 1  am. The only crime we've personally heard of, in all of Lisbon, since  we started coming in 2019, was on a friend's nephew, who at 3 am was  supposedly only "talking" with some drug dealers on Pink Street and had  his wallet stolen. But, as we would say in Minnesota, <adopt "Fargo  Accent"> "a lot of guys buy their drugs earlier in the day"  </>.

Principe  Real is a really nice neighborhood. While seemingly close on the map to  the Avenida Liberdade area, it is significantly higher elevation,  running along a spine that provides great views to the northeast and  southwest. The main road, Rua da Escola Politécnica, consists of one  cool restaurant or shop after the other, and right in the center is an  awesome park, Jardim França Borges, with not one, or two, but three  great "quiosques" (kiosks) for a coffee and pastry or drink and misto  sandwich. The 24 tram runs right along that main street, as do busses,  and the Rato metro stop is an easy walk away. Principe Real: very cool.

Graça  is a good choice for folks desiring a really "authentic" Lisbon  experience without the tourist crowds of Alfama. It sits atop the  highest of the city's seven hills, has several spectacular miradouros  (viewpoints), sports murals and street art, some great restaurants, and  has a homey, real-people feel. Originally working-class, Graça doesn't have the 5-star sheen of Liberdade, the renovated hipster vibe  of Principe Real, or the guitar-playing buskers of Chiado. But it is  super pleasant, if aerobically hilly.

These  are grittier, formerly scary haunts best suited to student and  low-budget travelers. Along with Cais do Sodré, Martim Moniz (b) and  Intendente (c) warrant mention by bloggers addressing the "where should I  avoid" question, but only late in the night. According to the inter  webs, prior to midnight single walkers should be fine, after, best in  groups. We've been to these areas for dinner several times via Bolt  (like an Uber) or the Metro, with no problems whatsoever other than the  "well this is kind of different" feeling prior to becoming acclimated.

I don't know if there even are hotels in Mouraria,  but it was on the map I snagged for this section. Again, perhaps better  for budget and student travelers. That said, one of the walks was on a Culinary Backstreets guided food tour that was super interesting, delicious, and highly recommended. But we did it in broad daylight.

(STRAY-ah): Estrella is a very relaxing, very civilized mostly residential area perfect for  those wishing to sink into the rhythms of Lisboeta life away from the  tourist experience but close enough to be into and out of that quickly.  Estrella is also close to Lapa, home to embassies and palatial estates. 

(beh-LIHM): Everyone goes to Belém.  You have to. That's where the Jerónimos Monastery is, the Discoveries  Monument, the Belém Tower, and countless excellent museums. But would we  hotel or AirBnb there? Probably not. Too far away from the central  district.

(ava-KNEE-desh NO-vash) (Picoas, Saldanha): Due north of the Marqués do Pombal traffic circle is the Avenidas Novas area, where we live. Described by various neighborhood guides as  "upscale residential and commercial", Avenidas Novas still contains a  huge number of hotels, from three to five stars, which cater  to business travelers or Portuguese not needing the Chiado / Liberdade  experience. There are probably 200 restaurants in walking distance, many  excellent, with easy walking as unlike most of the rest of Lisbon, it  is largely flat. 

Avenidas Novas has a fantastic museum, the Gulbenkian; a completely Portuguese local fish and vegetable market, Mercado 31 de Janeiro; a giant park, Parque Eduardo VII; and the only department store in Lisbon, El Corte Ingles.  

The architecture of Avenidas Novas is quite varied, from palaces of the  early 1900's to glass and steel modernity. Perhaps the most striking  architecture is the Moorish-influnced Campo Pequeno, the bullring. 

For us, after a day of adventuring, exiting the Metro or  bus at Praça Saldanha is so relaxing, so peaceful, such a relief.

(park dash nah-SHOZ), aka Expo: Parque das Naçōes is an excellent object lesson in the difference between what we travelers want a European city to be and what it actually is.  We want Alfama, trams, craggy old ladies poking their heads out of  windows above hanging laundry, some Disneyland fantasy of a place  trapped in another time. 

But Lisbon is a real city, in real time. It is  the Capital City, the home to the wildly popular and well-attended "Web Summit",  the home to countless tech start-ups and highly-educated and very well dressed young people. It is a modern city, and Parque das Naçōes is the  embodiment of that in adventurous glass and steel. 

From the striking  Santiago Calatrava designed Oriente train station (a must-see) to the  Oceanarium (an aquarium? who cares? no, this is different, this is  mind-blowing...), Expo is a cool area, with many hotels offering  stunning views of the river. It is the closest touristic area to the  airport and is right on the Metro Vermehla (red) line, so works well if  you have early or late flights and just need a place to spend one night  on the way in or out.