Lisbon is one of Europe's most beautiful, cosmopolitan cities and the most illuminated. Set over a series of hills near the mouth of the River Tagus, it's a place completely linked with the sea and the sun, highlighting the city’s unique architecture and beauty.

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Navigators embarked from here in the 15th and 16th centuries to sail unknown waters and discover new lands, and this legacy is displayed in the city's culture and heritage. With a history that spans many, many centuries, Lisbon is certainly a culturally rich city. However, the city has not refused to evolve over time. In fact, it managed to strike and maintain a proper balance between the ancient and the new.

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Modern buildings quietly found their way around the classical architecture that dominates the city’s core and there is no place where these contemporary and even avant-garde influences are more evident than in the Parque das Nações area, with its tall buildings – including the 145m-high sail-shaped Vasco da Gama Tower, a large shopping centre, the largest indoor arena in Portugal and Lisbon Oceanarium, one of the largest indoor aquariums in Europe.

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Portugal’s traditional music genre, fado, echoes on the narrow streets of the old neighbourhoods of Lisbon, such as Mouraria and Alfama, where you can also find the Museum of Fado and explore the history of this uniquely melancholic music in an immersive experience with high-quality headphones provided for you. On the opposite side of town, however, the old quarters of Bairro Alto come alive when the sun goes down, not with fado, but with all sorts of booze and modern music, emerging from multiple restaurants and open bars filled by crowds of tourists and locals looking for a fun night out that can continue until dawn.

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Almost everywhere you go in the city centre, you will literally step onto the Portuguese culture, with the traditional intricate Portuguese pavement, calçada portuguesa, right under your feet. At an arm’s reach in many walls and façades, you will also find the traditional Portuguese tile work, azulejos. However, there will also be large graffiti and other forms of street art in many places, even in the form of gigantic murals in the façades of abandoned buildings, many of them commissioned or supported by the city council itself.

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Lisbon is also very rich in museums, from the renowned Calouste Gulbenkian Museum to the modern Museum of Design (MUDE), the later being the perfect choice for those who are crazy about fashion. If you would rather buy clothes than just look at them, and if you want to avoid the shopping centres where you can’t enjoy the sun and natural light of Lisbon, feel free to stroll along the long and wide Avenida da Liberdade (Liberty Avenue) or some of the downtown streets – including the popular Rua Augusta (Augusta Street) – or visit the Chiado district, one of the best areas for outdoor shopping in the city. In the latter, you will even be able to sit right next to one of Portugal’s greatest poets, Fernando Pessoa, immortalized in a bronze statue in the terrace of the beautiful café A Brasileira, once a hotspot for intellectuals and artists. Street performers will probably be there to welcome you with music, dance or other art forms, and they constitute yet another important element in your cultural experience in Lisbon.

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