Alfama

Neighborhood · AlfamaLisbon,Portugal

Lisbon's oldest quarter, stepped lanes too narrow for wheels on the castle hill's flank, standing on bedrock while the 1755 earthquake flattened the rest.

Alfama is the tangle of lanes on the eastern flank of the castle hill, and it was never designed for wheels. The alleys are stepped, the doorways stand barely a shoulder's width apart, and the squares are small. Laundry hangs across the street, cats lie on the warm stone, and the domes of São Vicente and the Pantheon rise above the roofline. The best way to use it is to put the map away and take the downhill turning at every junction. It looks the way it does for a geological reason. The rest of the lower city was built on soft ground and came down in the earthquake of 1755, while this quarter sits on compact bedrock, so it held and kept its Moorish street plan. It was a fishermen's and dockworkers' quarter for centuries and poor for most of them, and the small fado rooms that are still here came out of that. In June the whole district goes outside for the Santo António festival, with sardines on grills in the doorways and tables in the street.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The cobbles are polished and steep — calçada limestone shines under a century of feet and gets genuinely slippery in rain; this is not a district for smooth soles.
The night of 12 June is the one — the eve of Santo António fills these alleys with grills and long tables, and the 13th is a holiday, so nobody hurries to stop.
The alleys empty in the evening — this is a working residential quarter, the day-trippers leave with the late trams, and after about nine what you hear is televisions and the fado rooms.

Things to do

1
Choose down and keep choosing
Enter at the top near the castle and, at every junction, take the alley that descends. You will lose your bearings inside five minutes, pass through three or four squares you could not find again, and come out at the river in about half an hour with no idea how.
2
Find a fado room rather than a fado show
The rooms here are small: a back room with a dozen tables, no stage, and no printed times. Ask at the door when the singing starts rather than looking for a sign, because most of them do not advertise. What you are listening for is a room that goes quiet on its own.