Moments from Lisbon street

Lisbon's street art scene grew out of a genuinely unusual civic decision: in the years after the 2008 financial crisis, when the city had large stretches of abandoned or crumbling buildings and relatively little money for conventional restoration, the municipal government began actively commissioning and permitting large-scale murals rather than treating street art purely as vandalism to be removed. Neighborhoods including Bairro Alto, Alfama, and the Bica funicular route are now dense with work by both Portuguese and international artists, ranging from tightly commissioned municipal projects to genuinely unauthorized pieces that have simply been left standing.

Because so much of it is scattered organically through residential streets rather than concentrated in one district, a guided walking tour is worth considering here more than at most street art destinations, local guides tend to know which pieces are recent, which have already been painted over, and which small side streets hold work that a casual wander would miss entirely. Bring a phone with a working map and expect a lot of hills, Lisbon's street art rewards genuine walking, often up steep cobbled inclines, over any single fixed viewing point.