Mouraria is the steepest, least tidied part of central Lisbon, and the place where new arrivals still settle. Rua do Benformoso is lined with Bangladeshi, Chinese, Indian, Nepalese, Brazilian and African shops. Above it the lanes climb in steps, narrow enough that laundry crosses the gap, with doors opening straight onto staircases and a tiled saint on a corner. The name means the Moorish quarter, and it is the oldest thing about the place.
When Lisbon fell to Afonso Henriques in 1147, the Muslims who survived were moved outside the wall onto this slope, and it has been the poor side of the hill for most of the time since. In the nineteenth century it produced fado: Maria Severa lived on Rua do Capelão, sang in taverns, took an aristocrat as a lover and died in 1846 at twenty-six. Nobody ever recorded her voice, but she was written about by name, and the lane still carries hers. Portugal's empire ended in the mid-1970s and people came back from Africa to these streets.