Alfama is the tangle of lanes on the eastern flank of the castle hill, and the reason it looks the way it does is geological. The rest of the lower city was built on soft ground and came down in the earthquake of 1755. This quarter sits on compact bedrock, so it held, and it kept its street plan. That plan is Moorish in origin, and the name comes from the Arabic al-hamma, meaning the hot springs. 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.
It was a fishermen's and dockworkers' quarter for centuries and poor for most of them, which is where fado belongs: sung in taverns here long before it was respectable, and still sung in small rooms with the lights down. In June the whole district goes outside for the Santo António festival — sardines on grills in the doorways, garlands across the alleys, tables in the street. The rest of the year the best way to use Alfama is to put the map away and take the downhill turning at every junction, because every downhill lane eventually reaches the river.