Age Of Rediscovery

Once the centre of an empire, Lisbon has more recently endured seriously hard times. But it is now enjoying a well-deserved renaissance fuelled by the creativity and self-reliance forged by those hard times, writes Madeleine Ross

- Madeleine Ross

THE PASTEL STREETSCAPES OF LISBON are perpetually bathed in a soft, diffused light reflected off white cobblestones polished by hundreds of years of traffic. Fresh seafood is the staple of every menu, handsome beaches are on the city’s doorstep, and the historic Bairro Alto district buzzes with some of the best nightlife in Europe. But for all its blessings, the Portuguese capital has only just become fashionable.

“Until very recently, Lisbon looked like it had been bombed,” says Bruno Gomes, founder of the ironically named We Hate Tourism, which runs tours of the city’s hidden corners. “When I was growing up, I saw Lisbon as an elegant older lady who would have been very pretty when she was young. Lisbon 20 years ago was an empty city. Buildings were falling apart and young families were moving to the suburbs.” Sculptor Fernanda Fragateiro remembers the waterfront district of Baixa as “very quiet, full of empty spaces and abandoned buildings”, when she moved into a studio there in 1999. “Sometimes it was scary to walk alone at night.”

The city’s fortunes have ebbed and flowed over the centuries. The heights of colonial wealth of the Age of Discovery were followed by the catastrophic devastation of an earthquake in 1755. More recently, a repressive fascist regime arose in the 20th century and fought an unsuccessful 13-year war to hold onto African colonies before democracy was restored in 1974. Then a flowering of the city triggered by its hosting of the World Expo in 1998 was cut short by a crippling recession that lasted from 2000 to 2014.