The 10 Best Things to Do in Lisbon (and Top Things to Avoid)

While they may feel endless, Lisbon is built on just seven hills, and every single one of them has a beautiful sunset spot. Miradouros — the city’s viewpoints — are where locals gather with a beer from the nearby kiosk and watch the sky change to spectacular colors over the river. 

Santa Catarina is my regular, mostly because of the giant reclining statue of Adamastor that everyone perches around, but Senhora do Monte and Portas do Sol are just as good if you want a quieter patch of wall to sit on. 

Get there half an hour before golden hour, grab a €2 beer from the quiosque, and make yourself comfy. More often than not, you’ll also be treated to live music or a DJ set. Go on a Sunday, and you’ll catch the biggest crowd and the best atmosphere; a Tuesday sunset here might just be you, a few regulars, and the view.

Alfama is Lisbon’s oldest neighborhood, and the only part of the city that survived the 1755 earthquake more or less intact, which is exactly why it still feels like a maze.

Spend an afternoon wandering without a map (your phone will lose signal in the narrower alleys, just a heads up), then come back after dark for fado, Portugal’s soul-baring folk music. 

Clube de Fado gets its fair share of visitors, and yes, you’ll hear plenty of Portuguese grumbling about that over their wine — but ask around and plenty of them will still send you there themselves. It’s set in a vaulted old cellar near the Sé Cathedral, founded by fado guitarist Mário Pacheco, and the caliber of singer it pulls in is the real deal — not the kind of place that waters things down just because the crowd’s grown.

If you want something scrappier, Clube Lisboa Amigos do Fado (elsewhere in the city) is the one locals keep more to themselves — tucked behind an unassuming building, part music school and part fado house, running Sundays 4-8 p.m. only.

Everyone will tell you to go to Pastéis de Belém, the bakery that’s been making these custard tarts to the original 19th-century recipe since 1837. Everyone is right, but nobody mentions the trick: skip the queue that forever snakes out the front door and head straight for the actual restaurant, where you can sit down and be served in a far shorter period of time than you’ll be waiting at the takeaway counter.

Dust them with cinnamon, never sugar (a tip I was taught by a Portuguese friend and now a hill I will die on), and eat at least one while still warm from the oven.

There’s a never-ending debate in Lisbon about whether neighboring Manteigaria does better tarts. If you find yourself craving a second, it might be the excuse you need to pop next door and sample both offerings.

Most people land at Jerónimos Monastery first and spend their remaining patience in the queue before they’ve even seen the good bits.

I really recommend you start the other way: at Belém Tower early, before the cruise-ship crowds arrive mid-morning, then walk the riverside path east toward MAAT, whose rooftop is free to climb even if you skip the exhibition inside.

Save Jerónimos for last, when the tour groups have thinned out for lunch, and slip into the free cloister garden behind it, which almost nobody realizes is open to the public without a ticket.

It’s the quietest, greenest patch in the whole neighborhood, and far quieter than pretty much anywhere nearby. If you’re heading here from Cais do Sodre, my favorite way is to hire a green Gira bike and cycle the five-ish kilometers along the river.

Lisbon’s oldest flea market has been running since medieval times, and it still sets up every Tuesday and Saturday in the shadow of the National Pantheon.

Expect stalls of chipped azulejo tiles, vintage vinyl, old Portuguese postcards, and the occasional excellent find buried under a pile of seriously assorted finds. Bargaining is expected but keep it friendly, and bring cash, as not all stallholders take cards.

Tuesday is the quieter, more local sitting, with serious collectors and dealers who want to talk about what they’re selling rather than just move volume.

As a rule of thumb, knocking 10-20% off an asking price is a fair, friendly opening move; going much lower than that on a small stall tends to land badly with sellers who are often working for very little as it is.

LX Factory is great, a former textile mill turned creative complex under the 25 de Abril Bridge, but everyone hits it on a Sunday for the market, and Saturday is now closer to a festival crowd than a wander.

If possible, go on a chilled weekday afternoon instead, when the courtyards empty out and you can sit with a coffee at Ler Devagar, the multi-story bookshop with the suspended bicycle, without queuing for a table.

Café na Fábrica, right by the main entrance, does a great flat white if you need a break from wandering, and the rooftop at Rio Maravilha is where I recommend to people who want the bridge view without the Sunday elbow-to-elbow crush.

Check what’s on at the small cinema and gallery spaces before you go too — LX has a habit of hosting pop-up exhibitions and screenings that only run for a week or two, so a bit of Googling before you turn up is always a good idea.

Everyone goes to Pena Palace, and the two-hour queue by 11 am is all the proof you need of that.

What most people don’t do is walk the extra 20-ish minutes to Monserrate, a Moorish-Gothic palace surrounded by one of the most extraordinary botanical gardens in Europe, with far fewer crowds.

If you’ve only got half a day, I’d send you to Monserrate over Pena. If you’ve got a full day, do Pena first thing with a pre-booked timed slot, then walk (not bus) the forest path down to Quinta da Regaleira, and finish at Monserrate as the crowds thin toward closing.

Bring proper shoes; the hills here are no joke. If you do decide to walk, you’ll almost definitely have the option to hop into a passing-by tuktuk if you change your mind along the way.

As a rule of thumb: if a restaurant has a menu in six languages and a tout outside trying to seat you, walk on. The real tasca is smaller, the menu’s handwritten in impossible-to-decipher-Portuguese or chalked on a board, and the prato do dia changes daily because someone’s uncle is cooking it.

If you want a guaranteed starting point, head to Imperial de Campo de Ourique — known to regulars simply as Tasca do Sr. João — a family-run spot that’s been feeding the neighborhood since 1985.

Order the bitoque, a thin steak topped with a fried egg and a rich, garlicky sauce, or ask if they’ve got porco preto: Iberian black pork from acorn-fed pigs in the Alentejo, usually served simply grilled — my all-time favorite Portuguese dish.

If it’s on the board, don’t skip bacalhau à brás either: shredded salt cod fried up with matchstick potatoes, scrambled egg, and black olives. Don’t be surprised if you’re sharing a table with strangers by the time your plate arrives — and once you’ve got your bearings at Tasca do João, use it as your template for hunting down your own find in Estrela or Graça.

Marvila is what LX Factory was years ago: old warehouses, working docks, and a wave of craft breweries and studios moving in regularly.

Start at Dois Corvos, whose taproom pours 17 rotating taps of small-batch IPAs, sours, and stouts out of a working brewery, then walk half a block down Rua Capitão Leitão to Fermentage (still known to regulars by its old name, Cerveja Lince), a chilled, board-game-and-football kind of taproom with decent pizza.

In between, the surrounding streets are covered in some of the boldest street art in Lisbon, especially along Rua do Açúcar, well beyond the one mural everyone photographs in Bairro Alto.

It’s a longer tram or Uber out, but it’s well worth it for a fun Saturday night (and worth checking each brewery’s calendar before you go, since pop-up food trucks and small gigs happen often and aren’t always advertised outside Instagram).

On a hot day, the easiest escape in Lisbon is the coastal train from Cais do Sodré, which hugs the Tagus and the Atlantic the whole way out.

If you want a full day of it, go all the way to Cascais, about 40 minutes, where a lovely old town, a marina, and a handful of small coves give you an optional wander alongside your swim. If you find yourself ravenous at the end of the day, head to Baía do Peixe for a seafood platter dinner.

Or if you’d rather skip the crowds and the polish, get off earlier at Carcavelos instead: a long, wide stretch of sand that’s popular with surfers and locals, noticeably less packed than Cascais in high season. Either way, trains run constantly and cost a few euros, so there’s no real way to get this one wrong.

Tram 28 is an icon, but it’s also one of the most pickpocketed rides in the country, precisely because a carriage full of distracted tourists photographing Alfama’s rooftops is exactly what professional pickpockets look for.

The worst spots are the boarding crush at Martim Moniz and the tight stop at Santa Luzia, where everyone’s looking at the view instead of their bag. If you want the ride, do it before 9 am or after 8 pm, wear your bag on your front, keep your phone zipped away rather than in your hand for photos, and never carry your actual passport.

Or take Tram 12E instead, which loops through much of the same territory with a fraction of the crowd.

Portuguese service staff are paid a standard wage, and a service charge is often already folded into your bill, so the 20% you might leave back home isn’t expected here.

Rounding up the bill or leaving a few euros for good service is the norm, and for a coffee or a quick lunch, nobody’s expecting anything at all. It’s a small thing, but over-tipping every table you sit at doesn’t read as generous to locals so much as it reads as a well-meaning misunderstanding of how the system here works.

Not only that, but it can also have a detrimental effect on how locals are served in restaurants in comparison.

Time Out Market is a good idea on paper: it has dozens of the city’s best kitchens under one roof, and it’s super central. The problem is that you’ll be fighting tour groups and cruise-ship crowds and paying a noticeable premium for food that’s often better and cheaper at the original restaurant’s actual location.

My actual move is to skip it altogether and head to Mercado de Campo de Ourique instead: the market that did the concept first, back in 2013, in a far more local neighborhood, with the same gourmet food-hall energy but a fraction of the crowd and none of the queues.