Pç Luis Camões: Bairro Alto

Bairro Alto means, upper neighborhood. Bairro Alto sits at the top of a hill, and is the most “recent” of Lisbon’s old quarters. Laid out in 1513, it was the city’s first planned district, with a small grid of narrow streets outside the medieval wall that stood where you now see the two churches in Praça Luís de Camões. It was the neighborhood of merchants and aristocrats, but by the late 1800s, it was home to several newspaper offices and two streets are even named after them. It is also the neighbourhood where the bars are to serve the journalists who left work late at night, and those were followed by brothels. Soon Bairro Alto became synonymous with a bohemian lifestyle, and by the 1980s it was where everyone went to in the late hours, creating street parties every Friday and Saturday night. Those continue to this day, although many of the night owls have moved down to the waterfront, in Cais do Sodré. It still has a variety of restaurants and bars, and although it no longer mixes different urban tribes, you still see people of all ages, straight and gay, bar-hopping and drinking on the streets.

To explore this magnificent neighborhood of Bairro Alto, please hop off at Praça Luis Camões.