Neighbourhoods
Viewpoints without the queue
The famous miradouros are famous for good reason and are not the only places with the view.
Neighbourhoods
What each part of the city is actually like to walk around and stay in.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 1 of 2
Neighbourhoods
Alfama, Graça and the difference two streets make
Neighbourhoods here change character over very short distances, and the guidebook version is usually one street.
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Neighbourhoods
What a street tells you before you order anything
The cafes on a block are a fairly honest census of who is on it, if you know what to look at.
Neighbourhoods
The lower grid and why it feels unlike the rest of the city
One district was rebuilt to a plan after catastrophe, and its right angles are an argument about how a city should work.
Neighbourhoods
Tiles are cladding, not decoration
The glazed façades that everyone photographs are doing structural and climatic work, and they are disappearing for specific reasons.
Neighbourhoods
The staircase streets and how they organise a hill
Steps are public roads here, and treating them as infrastructure explains a great deal about how neighbourhoods work.
Neighbourhoods
Two microclimates: the riverside and the ridge
Wind, humidity and temperature differ measurably between the bottom of the city and the top, and residents dress for it.
Neighbourhoods
What happens in a square, and when
A neighbourhood square runs a timetable of different populations, and it is the clearest window into how a street lives.
Neighbourhoods
The avenues, and the flat city most visitors never reach
North of the old town is a nineteenth and twentieth century city on level ground, and it is where a great deal of ordinary life…
Neighbourhoods
Where the tourist map stops
There is a fairly hard boundary around the visited city, and crossing it changes prices, language and the entire register of a…
Neighbourhoods
The pavement is a craft, and it is slippery
The patterned stone underfoot is laid by hand, one piece at a time, and it behaves badly in rain.
Neighbourhoods
How an old apartment building actually works
The building types here have consistent logic, and knowing it explains light, noise, damp and where the good flats are.