The Lisbon I Know Is Not the One on Your Screen

There is a Lisbon that exists on Instagram and in the travel supplements and in the recommendations of people who visited for five days and found it perfect. I know this Lisbon. It is a real place. It is not the whole place.

The whole place includes: the Mouraria resident who has been offered three times his apartment’s value to leave and has not left yet. The pastelaria owner on Rua dos Fanqueiros who has been there for forty years and whose rent has doubled twice in three years. The cabo-verdiana woman who runs a cultural association on Rua do Benformoso and is doing this work because someone has to. The young Portuguese architect who cannot afford to live in the city he was trained in and is living in Setúbal and commuting.

It also includes: the jacaranda bloom in May that stops everyone on the Avenida regardless of how many times they have seen it. The light at seven in the evening in October on the Tagus. The specific sound of Fado from a window when you are walking home. The miradouro at night when the castle is lit and the city below it is orange.

The Lisbon on your screen is a selection of the second list. The city that actually exists is both lists at once, inseparable, and the second list is not beautiful in spite of the first but because of it — because a city that is easy and comfortable and affordable to everyone who wants it stops being the kind of city that produces either beauty or difficulty in any interesting quantity.

Come. Pay attention to what you find. The city will show you both sides if you give it time.