Lisbon & Around

Overview

Lisbon is a city that fell down on the morning of 1 November 1755 and was rebuilt on a grid by a minister who used the emergency to expel the Jesuits, and the two halves of it, the rational downtown and the medieval hills that survived, are still visibly different cities. It sits on seven hills above the widest stretch of the Tagus, with ferries crossing to the far bank and two long bridges above them, and its light, off the water and the white limestone, is the thing visitors talk about afterwards.

The chapter takes in the capital and everything within an hour of it on the cheap suburban trains: Sintra, a hill town of royal palaces and follies that is a World Heritage landscape in its own right; the resorts of Estoril and Cascais along the coast to the west, where the royal family once summered and where the Atlantic surf starts; Cabo da Roca between them, the western tip of the continent; and, across the river, the Setúbal peninsula with the beaches of Costa da Caparica, the limestone Arrábida hills and Setúbal itself, a fishing port with dolphins in its estuary.

Around 3.3 million people live in the metropolis, a third of the country, and the region takes most of the international arrivals, which shows in the prices of the centre and in the trams. The good news is that the trains out are frequent, the coast is cold enough to thin the crowds, and Lisbon’s own neighbourhoods one hill over from the tourist ones still close for lunch.

History & character

Olisipo, the Moors and the crusaders

The castle hill was settled by the 8th century BC and fortified by the 2nd; Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans held it in turn, the Romans as Felicitas Julia Olisipo, the main trading port of Lusitania. The Moors took the city in 711 and enlarged the castle; Alfama, the tangle of lanes below it, is their street plan and the oldest surviving quarter of the city. In 1147 Afonso Henriques took Lisbon after a four-month siege with the help of English, Flemish and German crusaders who had sailed from Dartmouth, and the cathedral went up the same year on the site of the mosque; Sintra’s Moorish castle surrendered a month later.

The capital of the Discoveries

Lisbon became the capital once the Reconquista was complete, and from the late 15th century the richest port in Europe: the ships for India and Brazil left from Belém, and Manuel I spent the spice profits on the monastery and the tower there, in the exuberant late-Gothic style that carries his name. The Jerónimos Monastery became the burial church of the Aviz dynasty; the Belém Tower was the ceremonial gate through which the explorers sailed. The same king ordered the conversion or expulsion of the city’s Jews and Muslims.

The earthquake and Pombal

At about 9.40 on the morning of All Saints’ Day 1755 an earthquake now estimated at magnitude 7.7 or more, centred in the Atlantic off Cape St Vincent, shook the city; fires and a tsunami followed, two-thirds of Lisbon was destroyed and the dead may have numbered tens of thousands. The Marquis of Pombal rebuilt the lower town as the Baixa, a grid of uniform streets between the Praça do Comércio on the river and the Rossio, one of the first planned earthquake-resistant districts anywhere. Alfama, on rock, survived; the Chiado, uphill to the west, was rebuilt again after a fire in 1988.

Romantics, republicans and the revolution

Sintra’s ruins drew the Romantics: Byron called it a glorious Eden, and in the 1830s and 40s the German king-consort Ferdinand II built the Pena Palace on the summit out of a ruined monastery, the model for a whole hillside of aristocratic villas. The royal family used the palaces until the republic of 1910 nationalised them and opened them to the public. Estoril and Cascais became the resort of exiled royalty in the 20th century, and Lisbon itself was the stage for the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974, when the army ended the dictatorship in a day and the crowds put flowers in the rifles; the bridge over the Tagus was renamed for the date.

Expo 98 gave the city its last big reinvention, the Parque das Nações district on the eastern riverfront with the Oceanarium, one of the largest indoor aquariums in Europe, and Oriente station; the Web Summit moved here from Dublin in 2016 and the remote-work economy that followed it is the current chapter.

See & do

Belém

The Belém riverfront is the one compulsory morning. The Jerónimos Monastery, the necropolis of the Aviz kings and the Manueline masterpiece, has the cloister; the Belém Tower, a 16th-century fort of local lioz limestone with Moorish-style turrets, opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10, until 5.30 in winter and 6.30 in summer; and the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, the 1960 monument to the navigators, stands between them with a compass-rose map on the pavement. The Pastéis de Belém bakery beside the monastery has sold the original custard tart since the 1830s, and the queue moves faster than it looks.

The hills

The Castle of Saint George opens daily, with ramparts, an archaeology exhibition heavy on the Moorish centuries, a camera obscura and the best view of the river; walk up through Alfama rather than taking the tram. The cathedral, begun in 1147, is a fortress-church of mixed Romanesque, Gothic and baroque parts that has survived every earthquake since. The National Pantheon, the 17th-century church of Santa Engrácia with its white dome, holds the tombs of national figures, and its terrace looks over the whole eastern city. The Museu Nacional do Azulejo, in a convent founded in 1509 east of Alfama, is the museum to see if you see only one small one.

Sintra’s palaces

Sintra is a UNESCO cultural landscape, and its sights are spread over a wooded ridge. The Pena Palace, painted in reds and yellows on the summit, is 19th-century Romanticism at full volume and opens daily from 10 to 6, with timed tickets that sell out. The Castle of the Moors on the next crag, built in the 8th and 9th centuries and taken in 1147, is a wall walk with the best view of Pena. Quinta da Regaleira, built between 1904 and 1910 for a Brazilian-Portuguese millionaire, is the one with the spiral initiation well and the tunnels; Monserrate, further out, is an English-built villa in a botanical garden, open daily. Cabo da Roca, 40 minutes on the 403 bus towards Cascais, is a cliff, a lighthouse working since 1772 and a stone marking the end of Europe.

Coast, hills and river

The Cascais-Guincho cycle path, the surf at Guincho and Ericeira, and the Arrábida coast between Sesimbra and Setúbal, with the small cove beaches of Figueirinha, Galapinhos and Portinho da Arrábida, are the region’s outdoor days. Dolphin-watching boats leave from Setúbal for the Sado; the Tróia ferry crosses to the beach on the far side; and the wine cellars of Azeitão, José Maria da Fonseca and Bacalhôa, are on the road between Setúbal and the bridge. Back in Lisbon, the ferry to Cacilhas and the lift up the Cristo Rei is the cheapest panorama in the city.

Towns & cities

Lisbon

Lisbon arranges itself into a few walkable districts and a lot of hills. The Baixa is the flat Pombaline grid between the Praça do Comércio and the Rossio; the Chiado above it to the west is the shopping and theatre quarter, and the Bairro Alto above that is where the bars are. East of the Baixa, Alfama climbs to the Castle of Saint George, with the cathedral, the National Pantheon and the fado houses on the way; the tram through it is the city’s most famous ride and its most famous pickpocketing spot. Belém, 6 km west along the river, has the monuments of the Discoveries; the Parque das Nações, at the eastern end, the modern riverfront.

Sintra

Sintra is 28 km north-west of Lisbon on the flank of a wooded ridge, a small town at the bottom and palaces up the hill: the National Palace with its two conical kitchen chimneys in the centre, the Castle of the Moors and the Pena Palace on the summits, Quinta da Regaleira with its initiation well and Monserrate with its garden in the woods. It is the most visited day trip in the country and the buses up the hill fill by mid-morning; the circular 434 route serves the castle and Pena, the 435 Regaleira, Seteais and Monserrate, on a day ticket. The Palace of Queluz, rococo and half-way back to Lisbon on the same railway, is the one everyone skips and should not.

Cascais and Estoril

Cascais, 40 minutes from Cais do Sodré on the coastal train, was a fishing harbour that the royal family made a resort, and it still has the citadel, a marina that has hosted the America’s Cup, the Paula Rego museum, and Guincho beach 10 km along a seafront cycle path past the Boca do Inferno blowhole. Estoril, one stop back towards Lisbon, is the casino town, joined to Cascais by a beachfront promenade and long a home of exiled royalty and film festivals. Ericeira, up the coast north of Sintra, is the surf town, one of only two World Surfing Reserves in Europe.

Setúbal and the south bank

Setúbal, 50 km south across the Tagus, is a working port and fish-market town with a flat, walkable centre along the Avenida Luísa Todi, a resident dolphin colony in the Sado estuary, the Arrábida hills and their beaches behind it and the Tróia peninsula’s long white beach across the river by ferry. Its tascas serve some of the cheapest good seafood in the country. Sesimbra, under the western end of the Arrábida, is the fishing village with the beach; Costa da Caparica, straight across from Lisbon, is the city’s beach strip, a ferry and a bus away.

Mafra itself is a small town with a big square; the surf beach of Ericeira is 10 km down the road.

Food & drink

Lisbon eats fish. The city’s dish is grilled sardines, eaten on bread in the street during the June saints’ festivals and on plates the rest of the summer, and the everyday lunch is a grilled fish of the day with boiled potatoes, or bacalhau in one of its several hundred forms. The tasca is the institution: a small room, a handwritten board, a prato do dia with soup, wine and coffee, and the couvert of bread and olives that costs a few euros if you touch it. The bifana, thin marinated pork in a roll, and the prego, its beef equivalent, are the standing-up lunch and the after-midnight one.

The pastry that conquered the world is from here: the pastel de nata, a custard tart in flaky pastry, was born as the pastel de Belém at the bakery beside the Jerónimos Monastery, which bought the monks’ recipe and still keeps it secret; every pastelaria in the city sells its own version, warm, with cinnamon. Sintra has two of its own, the cheese-based queijadas and the almond-filled travesseiros; Setúbal’s are the tortas de Azeitão.

The wines come from across the river. Moscatel de Setúbal, a fortified muscat aged in wood, was invented by José Maria da Fonseca, whose company, founded in 1834 and the oldest table-wine producer in the country, still makes most of it at Azeitão; the same village gives its name to Queijo de Azeitão, a small, soft, buttery sheep’s cheese. Lisbon’s own wine region, north of the city in the Oeste hills around Alenquer and Torres Vedras, produces most of the cheap house red poured in the capital.

Nature

For a capital region it has a surprising amount of wild coast. The Sintra-Cascais natural park runs from the Sintra ridge, where the laurel and cork-oak woods around the palaces are part of the World Heritage landscape, down to the cliffs of Cabo da Roca and the dunes of Guincho, a stretch of Atlantic shore that development has largely missed. Guincho and the beaches north to Ericeira are surf and wind coast; the sea is cold and the currents strong.

South of the river, the Arrábida Natural Park, founded in 1976, covers 176 km² of limestone ridge and sea along the southern edge of the Setúbal peninsula, 53 km² of it marine, with small cove beaches below cliffs and Mediterranean scrub on top; the road over the ridge from Setúbal is the drive. East of it, the Sado estuary is a nature reserve of salt marsh and tidal mills, and the home of a resident bottlenose dolphin colony that the boats from Setúbal go out to find.

Climate

Lisbon has the mildest big-city climate in Europe and the region trades on it: wet, soft winters that rarely freeze, long dry summers cooled by the Atlantic, and sunshine most days of the year. The catch is the wind and the water. A north-westerly blows along the coast on most summer afternoons, strong enough to make Guincho a windsurfing beach and to put a jacket on you at dinner, and the sea stays cold in August.

Sintra makes its own weather. The ridge catches the sea mist and is often cloudy and ten degrees cooler when Lisbon is clear, which is why the kings summered there; take a layer for Pena in any month. The south bank and Setúbal are warmer and drier, sheltered by the Arrábida, and the estuary beaches are the ones where the water is bearable. Rain falls mostly from November to March and can be heavy; the hills of Alfama and the Bairro Alto are slippery limestone in it.

When to go

Spring and autumn are Lisbon’s seasons. April to June and September to October give warm days, cool evenings and manageable queues at Belém and Sintra, and the light that the city is known for is at its best in the long evenings of June. The June saints are the fixed date: the city’s own festival for Santo António peaks on the night of 12 June with street parties, sardines and paper decorations in every old neighbourhood, and 13 June is the municipal holiday.

The surf calendar runs the other way: the big swells at Guincho and Ericeira come with the autumn and winter storms, and the world championship contests at Ribeira d’Ilhas and Guincho are timed to them.

Getting there

Humberto Delgado airport is 7 km north-east of the centre, on the red metro line, with more than 36 million passengers a year and most of the country’s intercontinental flights; a taxi or ride-hail to the centre takes 20 minutes outside rush hour, and the 15 minutes the metro promises to the Baixa is real. From the airport to Cascais by car is anything from 30 minutes to an hour and a quarter depending on traffic; Carris runs a bus from the airport to Cais do Sodré, where the Cascais trains start. Cascais has only a general-aviation aerodrome with a few Sevenair flights from Bragança, Portimão, Vila Real and Viseu.

Long-distance trains stop in Lisbon only. Trains from Porto and the north arrive at Santa Apolónia, the oldest terminus in the country, on the edge of Alfama, and at Oriente, the Expo 98 hub in the Parque das Nações; those from the Algarve and the Alentejo cross the Tagus to Oriente and Entrecampos. Porto is three hours by Alfa Pendular, Faro about the same, Coimbra under two.

Getting around

The region’s transport is layered and works better than it looks. Inside Lisbon, the metro’s four lines and 56 stations cover the centre and the airport; Carris runs the buses, the funiculars and the trams, including the tram through Alfama that every visitor rides and every pickpocket works; the Santa Justa lift and the funiculars are transport with a queue. A rechargeable Viva Viagem card, bought at any metro machine, loads single trips, 24-hour passes and cash “zapping” credit that works on metro, buses, trams, suburban trains and the ferries; validate before boarding the trains.

Three suburban railway lines run by CP reach the region. The Cascais line leaves Cais do Sodré along the river for Oeiras, Estoril and Cascais, 40 minutes end to end; the Sintra line leaves Rossio, in the Baixa, for Sintra, about 40 minutes, with some trains starting from Oriente instead; the Azambuja line follows the Tagus north-east and is of little use to visitors. Fertagus commuter trains cross the 25 de Abril bridge to the Setúbal peninsula, and Transtejo ferries cross the river from the Praça do Comércio and Cais do Sodré to Cacilhas, Barreiro, Montijo and the other south-bank towns; Setúbal is reached by train from Lisbon or by ferry to Barreiro and train from there.

In Sintra the circular buses and the tuk-tuks do the hill; in Cascais the free BiCas bikes and the seafront path do the coast; in Setúbal the centre is flat and the Arrábida beaches have a summer bus.

Practical info

The national basics are in the Portugal guide. Regionally: Lisbon adds a small municipal tourist tax per person per night to hotel bills, and some of the coastal towns do the same; check the total when booking.

Pickpocketing is the region’s crime, concentrated on the Alfama tram, the metro, the Cais do Sodré and Rossio areas and the Sintra trains; the advice from the police, played over the station speakers, is to keep bags closed and in front. Cais do Sodré station and the back lanes of the Bairro Alto after the bars close are the two places locals avoid late at night; the last trains from Cascais and Sintra are best skipped for the same reason.

Setúbal is generally safe but has some of the more troubled housing estates in the country on its edges; the shabbiness is the warning, and the centre and the seafront are fine. The Lisbon Card, sold at the airport and tourist offices, bundles transport with free or reduced entry to the main monuments and pays off on a two-day Belém-and-hills itinerary.