Europe Travel Guides

Points of interest

Luca

This modern Italian restaurant packs in local businesspeople for lunch, and those in the know for dinner. There is lovely organic (Portuguese) olive oil on every table, pastas are made fresh, the seafood risotto is a (very generous) highlight. Desserts are irresistible and they serve Lavazza coffee for a great post-meal pick-me-up.

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Café Martinho da Arcada

In business since 1782, this tiled, yellow-and-white-tableclothed place was once a haunt of Pessoa, Portugal's greatest 20th-century poet. Although the literary lions have moved on, Martinho's outdoor tables beneath a colonnade make a fine spot for a traditional meal.

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La Caffé

Upstairs from the Lanidor boutique is this modish restaurant, cafe and bar that makes a great spot to drop in to even if you're not looking for a meal. However it's worth timing your visit for a light lunch or more substantial dinner as the food is good, fresh Italian-based fare. The attractive bar-lounge has access to fashion mags and free internet.

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Torre de Belém

One of Belém's highlights and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this whimsical white Manueline masterpiece was built in 1515 as an offshore watchtower to protect the city's harbour. Designed by Diogo and Francisco Arruda for King Manuel I, it is wonderfully detailed with the flamboyant flourishes and maritime motifs of the Manueline style.

Amazingly, it once sat midstream before the water line moved. Now you reach land by an unsightly modern footbridge.

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Casa dos Bicos

This whimsical 16th-century mansion was one of the few to survive the 1755 earthquake. Built by Afonso de Albuquerque, former viceroy to India, it's known as the House of 'Points' or 'Spikes' because of its diamond-shaped stone facade. As it houses the Comemorações dos Descobrimentos organisation, the interior is not open to the public, except for special events.

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Museu Nacional do Teatro

You won't need to know anything about Portuguese drama to find the National Theatre Museum fascinating. It houses a beguiling collection of 300,000 pieces - wonderful theatrical costumes, props, models of sets, drawings, posters, programmes, postcards, scripts, scores and photos. It's located in the lush Parque de Monteiro Mór.

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Igreja de São Roque

The unremarkable facade of this 16th-century Jesuit church masks the embarrassment of riches inside. The church consists of several chapels, the most notable (and extravagant) being the Capela de São João Baptista (Chapel of St John the Baptist). The accompanying museum features religious artefacts.

Commissioned in 1742 by Portugal's most extravagant king, Dom João V, this chapel was designed and built in Rome using the most expensive materials possible, including amethyst, alabaster, agate, lapis lazuli and Carrara marble.

After its consecration by Pope Benedict XIV it was dismantled and shipped to Lisbon for an outrageous sum at the time.

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Museu de Artes Decorativas

This brilliant museum and school of decorative arts, operated by the Fundação Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva, displays 15th- to 19th-century furniture, textiles, jewellery, silverware and porcelain in an aristocratic 18th-century palace. Call ahead about the workshops where artisans practise traditional wood carving, metalwork, decorative painting and more.

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A Ginginha

Near Largo de São Domingos there are several tiny bars serving up medicinal sized shots of Ginginha, a potent, punch-packing cherry brandy. The most popular such joint is A Ginginha, which has been inebriating locals and visitors since around 1840. You can take your medicine com (with) or sem (without) cherries...most folk prefer cough syrup! Try it once.

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Pavilhão Chines

After being greeted by a waistcoated waiter apparently hired from a different era, you soon realise that this is no ordinary bar. There are fabulous, kitsch knick-knacks in cabinets, on the walls and anywhere else there's a spare piece of real estate. Locals head straight to the back bar, as visitors get sideways on the lethal cocktails.

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Kremlin

Lisbon's home of house doesn't really heat up until a madrugada (the pre-dawn early hours), and these days it's generally only packed on weekends with upwardly mobile Lisboetas keen to dance at this legendary club. While it's a far cry from its heady days during 1988's Summer of Love, Kremlin can still transcend.

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Events

Catholic Portugal celebrates festas (festivals), feiras (fairs) and romarias (religious pilgrimages) like they're going out of style. When you add in an almost-religious love of soccer and a vibrant arts calendar, Lisbon is abuzz almost all year round.

Carnaval - Mardi Gras with rosary beads - sees normally reserved Lisboêtas indulge in some revelry before they start fasting for Lent. Come May (and October) hundreds of thousands of pilgrims make their way to Fàtima to celebrate the apparitions of the Virgin Mary witnessed by three shepherd children in 1917. Hot on its heels is the June Festas dos Santos Populares (Festivals of the Popular Saints) - a riot of parades, music, dancing, fireworks, all-night partying and, of course, church services.

A celebration of Portugal's proud seafaring history, the Festival dos Oceanos (Oceans Festival) in August encompasses music, tours, food, regattas and parades. Wine lovers in town in November can have their thirsts sated at the Festival do Vinho. Other highlights include the 18 concerts of the poetically rhyming Super Bock Super Rock festival in March, the Festival de Cinema Gay e Lésbico in late September and an international marathon every November.

Fado aficionados should visit in February, when the Festival das Músicas e dos Portos (Harbour and Music Festival) showcases the country's melancholic folksinging tradition.

Along with the usual Christmas, New Year and Easter public holidays, Lisbon celebrates a range of other religious days: Carnaval Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday), Corpus Christi in May/June, Feast of the Assumption (15 August), All Saints' Day (1 November) and Feast of the Immaculate Conception (8 December).

Historical and political holidays are Labour Day (1 May), Liberty Day (celebrating the 1974 Revolution of the Carnations) on 25 April, Portugal Day, or Camões & the Communities Day (10 June), Republic Day (commemorating the declaration of the Portuguese Republic in 1910) on 5 October, and Independence Day (commemorating the restoration of independence from Spain in 1640) on 1 December.

official holidays