Lingering in Lisbon: A collection of hidden gems to pass your time in Portugal’s capital city in the best way

A specially curated ‘survival kit’ of exceptional places to make an immersive stay in Lisbon so special the visitor may be tempted to never return home

It is no longer a secret – Lisbon is a magnetic city. Many visitors come for a few days, but the more fortunate linger for a few weeks, or even years.

It is difficult not to let the city get under your skin and slip into your soul. A city of contrasts – historic and hip, traditional and forward-looking, imposing and neighbourly – Lisbon is best enjoyed slowly, living in one of its many inner-city ‘villages’, hanging out in places tourists do not get to see.

This writer has been travelling to Lisbon regularly for the last 15 years and, from 2015 to 2018, owned an apartment in the old quarter of Mouraria. Much has changed. Yes, gentrification has driven up prices and rents, but this is unfortunately no different to many other European cities. However, Lisbon is indisputably more cosmopolitan today, with diversity and energy complementing Portuguese passion and languor.

Some of these new businesses are being created by Portuguese, adding a contemporaneity to their culture; others are the brainchildren of internationals, recently arrived in Lisbon to live a new life.

Josephine Bistro & Wine Bar

Intendente is a generous, oval pedestrian square, bordered by grand town houses, crumbling or restored. Australian golf pro Garry and his French wife Marie, moved to the neighbourhood from Rotterdam and opened Josephine in 2014.

This café-bistro is the perfect local haunt to drop by any time of the day, open from breakfast through to that final after-dinner drink, seven days a week. There is great music inside and a spacious esplanada for watching people pass, as Josephine is a street away from a lively Indian-Bangladeshi-Chinese district.

“We wanted to create a neighbourhood joint, respecting the local culture, for Portuguese and internationals,” says Garry. It is no surprise Josephine pulls a good crowd: prices are friendly, dishes tasty and service welcoming.

Lully 1661 Bakery

Rua do Forno do Tijolo is a few minutes’ walk north of Intendente. This lively street is like a British ‘high street’ that has managed to keep its independent retailers and fend off the chains. Created by three Frenchmen, who met working in Shanghai, Lully 1661 is a wonderful slice of French savoir vivre… in central Lisbon. During the grim years of the Salazar dictatorship, bread making was a centralised government activity, and really good bread is still a little hard to find.

The bakery, open since last September, has baked Lisbon’s bread revolution: crisp baguettes, dreamy pains au chocolat, crusty country loaves made with biological flour imported from France, and wickedly yummy patisseries – look out for the Paris-Brest and Kouign-amann, a caramelised Breton speciality – all prepared by a French chef patissier.

Alain, one of the three owners, now living in the neighbourhood, explains the name was inspired by Jean-Baptiste Lully, the seminal Italian-born baroque composer and libertine, naturalised French in 1661, who came from a family of millers. Lully 1661 has a delicious je ne sais quoi of French decadence, and, you guessed it, the three friends have got off to a flying start.

Petit Bouquet Florist

A few doors up, a young polyglot French woman with a passion for flowers has created Petit Bouquet. Behind her inspired window displays, Pauline works with an explosion of colour and form.

This magical shop is pure delight, and it is almost impossible to resist sweeping up a bunch or two to gift, or take home.

Pauline selects her stock, three times a week, with the same care a Michelin restaurateur might take marketing for their kitchen. “I want the flowers to be as fresh as possible. If I sell everything, I just shut up the shop,” she says laughing. Three years after opening, her creativity is kept busy, artfully mixing colours and blossoms, for passers-by, businesses and events. Her neighbour, Lully 1661, is a regular customer!

Salted Books Bookshop

“I wanted the kind of local bookshop I used to enjoy browsing in when I lived in London’s East End,” says Alex Holder. After a two-year search for the perfect location that eventually led to Santos, last September she opened Salted Books (because everything tastes better salted!).

By far the most challenging English-language bookshop in Lisbon, its eclectic selection includes recent publications of literary fiction and a children’s book section that delighted this adult. On a recent Saturday visit, the shop was packed with Portuguese and international visitors avidly turning pages.

Alex is the author of Open Up: Why Talking About Money Will Change Your Life, and her articles have been published in The Guardian, Elle, and more.

To Essential Algarve’s devil’s advocate question, “why buy a book in the digital age?”, Alex replies, “Information goes in better when it’s on paper.” Arguably the book then has a second life as a ‘friend’ on our shelves. For those who want to try their hand at writing their own book, Salted Books runs creative writing courses.

Comida Independente Wine & Food Shop

Santos is an area of Lisbon bursting with new activity, and uber-cool coffee shops on every corner. If you are searching for something a little stronger, Comida Independente is an innovative side street wine shop and bar.

The Portuguese Rita Santos curates a selection of quality wines from low-intervention farming producers. Portuguese wines are among the best anywhere, as Essential Algarve readers are often advised, but it is equally exciting to see wines here from Italy, France and Austria, countries too rarely available in Portugal.

Many of these wines are hard-to-come-by, small-batch wines made by boutique wineries with which Comida Independente has built personal relationships. For a small corkage fee, it is possible to taste on the spot, accompanied by cold plates of meats, cheese, olives, etc. Every Saturday morning, Comida Independente runs a producers’ market in the adjacent street.

Damas Restaurant

Located in a former industrial bakery, in the ever-evolving hill neighbourhood of Graça, Damas accomplishes the feat of being a classic that remains hip.

Run by two women, Alex and Clara, Damas is a stylish, determinedly unconventional cross between restaurant, bar and club.

Chefs toss typical Portuguese ingredients up in the air to produce a menu of inventive fusions, handwritten on a tiled wall, which surprise at each visit. Do not forget to book, and expect a bohemian crowd. After dinner, linger with a glass or two of bio wine or sit in, until the early hours, on one of the frequent music gigs.

First published in Essential Algarve, June 2024