Lisbon

Why go

Pessoa's city — a poet who invented seventy-two other writers and rarely left these streets. Seven hills and the light — the Tagus reflects it back and the tiles hold it. A rebuilt capital — the 1755 earthquake destroyed the centre and the Marquês de Pombal replanned it in five years. Fado — sung in small rooms in Alfama and Mouraria, and it is not folklore.

The character

On All Saints' Day 1755 an earthquake, a fire and a tsunami destroyed most of Lisbon and killed perhaps forty thousand people. The Marquês de Pombal rebuilt the lower town in five years on a grid of standardised, earthquake-braced buildings — the Baixa Pombalina, one of Europe's first pieces of rational urban planning — and the contrast between that grid and the medieval Alfama, which survived on its rock, is the city's basic structure.

Fernando Pessoa is its writer. He worked as a commercial translator, lived in rented rooms, and produced poetry under seventy-two invented personalities with separate biographies and styles, publishing almost nothing in his lifetime; the trunk found after his death in 1935 held twenty-five thousand pages. The Book of Disquiet, assembled from it, is a Lisbon book in the way Ulysses is a Dublin one — the same streets, the same office, the same river light. Modern Lisbon is warm, hilly, increasingly expensive and full of visitors, and it still rewards the aimless walking that Pessoa's narrator does.

Places of character

Casa Fernando Pessoa — his last address, now a library and museum with the room reconstructed. A Brasileira and Martinho da Arcada — the cafés he used, one with a bronze of him outside, one where he ate lunch. Alfama at seven in the morning — the medieval quarter before the tuk-tuks, with laundry and cats. Miradouros — Senhora do Monte, Graça, Santa Catarina; the viewpoints are the city's public rooms. Museu Nacional do Azulejo — five centuries of tiles in a sixteenth-century convent, and the best small museum here. A fado house in Mouraria — where the music started; go late, do not talk while it is sung.

The way to do it

Walk uphill and take the trams down. Eat late. Use the miradouros as rest stops rather than destinations. Book fado in a small room in place of a dinner show. And go out to Belém early for the monastery before the queue reaches the pastelaria.

One perfect day

Coffee and a pastel de nata standing at a counter, then Alfama before eight — empty lanes, laundry, the castle above. Down through the Baixa grid to the river. Tram 28 up to Graça for the miradouro. Late lunch of grilled fish. Afternoon at the tile museum, which needs an hour and repays two. Back through Chiado, past Pessoa's cafés, with a stop at his bronze table. Sunset from Santa Catarina with a drink and half the city on the wall. Dinner at ten, then fado in a room in Mouraria at midnight, with the lights down and nobody speaking.

Grand hotels

Avenida Palace — 1892 beside Rossio station, the belle époque Lisbon that survived the twentieth century. Palácio Belmonte — a fifteenth-century palace built into Roman and Moorish walls in Alfama, ten suites.

When to go

Best expression: April to June and September to October — warm, clear and before or after the peak. Consider: June for the Santos Populares, when Alfama grills sardines in the street for two weeks. Avoid if possible: August, hot and at capacity, and the wettest weeks of November.

The frame

Ideal stay 4 nights · Minimum 3 nights · Best arrival by air; the metro reaches the centre in twenty minutes · Airport LIS, 7 km · Walkability excellent but seriously hilly · Best without a car yes