I first visited Lisbon 25 years ago. The city is now unrecognisable

By the middle weekend of November 1999, Praça do Comércio had seen better days. The main plaza on Lisbon’s waterfront seemed to be as much an ad-hoc urban gallery as an important public space, so extensive and so graffiti-splattered was the wooden boarding, shielding its many once-fine buildings. Cracked windows peeped out from behind MDF.

It was not only my first time in the city, but my first mini-break at the start of a freshly minted relationship. Together, we had done that classic tourist thing of wandering down to the big square, naively expecting to be impressed. We were not. Instead, we stood there shivering, underdressed for the weather, as a premature but ferocious winter wind whipped off the River Tagus, giving the air of dilapidation and decline an additional chill.

The “better days” in question would have included the late 18th century, when Lisbon was the pulse of the Portuguese Empire. Then, the boats tethered on the south side of the Praça would have been bound for colonial crown-jewel Brazil and the wharves of Rio de Janeiro. And the Rua Augusta Arch, on the square’s north side, would have been rising; part of the reconstruction of the city which followed the cataclysmic earthquake of 1755.

Rather more relevantly, Lisbon’s better days also include, well, now. Anyone who has visited the Portuguese capital in, say, the past 15 years, will not recognise the description above. In 2024, the city has never looked grander, more elegant, or more gorgeous.

People have noticed, too. You only have to glance at social media to appreciate Lisbon’s popularity. It cries out in the thousands of selfies snapped at the city’s beauty spots – the Castelo de São Jorge on its bluff; the antique yellow trams on Line 28 up to the fortress’s main gate; the riverside at Belém – where the Tagus really starts to widen into its estuary.

This Instagram sheen is supported by the data. Portugal enjoyed a record-breaking 2023 in terms of tourism. Not only was the key figure – 26.5 million international guests – the highest the country has achieved to date, it was a 19 per cent leap on the same statistic for 2022. And Lisbon is the backbone to this uptick. The capital is by far the most visited part of the country. It was responsible for more than a quarter of that 26.5 million headcount, welcoming 6.5 million tourists – almost twice the number of holidaymakers who dashed to the second best-loved region, the beach-hotel-heavy Algarve (3.7 million).

To put this in context, 6.5 million also amounts to more than half the international-visitor figure for the entirety of Portugal – 11.6 million – in the year of my first trip to its capital.

In other words, things were very different then. The Lisbon of 1999 was certainly a city of the 20th century, but it did not feel like a gleaming metropolis on the verge of the 21st.

Although there were bright moments, my chief recollection of that weekend is of tripping along inconsistently cobbled streets in the rain, feet catching on holes where stone blocks had gone missing. The shops on Rua da Prata – now the height of sophistication – seemed to cater solely to the wardrobes of the more conservative grandma (or else, sold lace doilies, and nothing else), while the food was dreadful. Every restaurant (the ones that were open, anyway) apparently offered little more than bacalhau. Salted cod is, of course, a Portuguese delicacy, but the servings we ate in 1999 were so salty, I started to think we were midway into an 18th-century transatlantic voyage, and the fish had to last until Rio.

To explain why Lisbon was so dreary back then requires a short history lesson. Although (to me at least) 1999 seems like the recent past, it is a quarter of a century ago; a sizeable chunk of time. Go back a further 25 years from 1999 and you land in 1974, a flashpoint year in Portugal’s story – when the Carnation Revolution finally pulled down the Estado Novo, the authoritarian system which had ruled the country since 1933. Portugal had stagnated during that tough period, and was recovering from it at the end of the century.

By contrast, the 25 years since 1999 have been a happier tale; one of resurgence, partially aided by European Union funding (Portugal joined the Euro in 1999). There have been notable successes along the way. Even football – so often decried as a blight – has played a helpful role; Portugal’s hosting of Euro 2004 prompted a smartening of its major cities.

I went back to Lisbon for that tournament, and have returned a further three times since. On each occasion, I have been astounded by the great leaps forward in my absence. The Lisbon of my most recent trip, in 2022, bore no resemblance to the city of 1999. Praça do Comércio is now fully restored, revelling in its riverside position. And the restaurants and shops which decorate the streets behind it are as modern and alluring as any in London, Paris or Rome. Up on the hilltop, meanwhile, the bars of the Bairro Alto party until dawn.

Not everyone approves. While the situation has not reached the boiling point, Lisbon is starting to grumble about the crowd-scene in its centre. Interviewed by Reuters in July, 60-year-old Rosa Santos – who has spent most of her life in the Castelo district – complained that “Lisbon has stopped being a city and become an amusement park. I want to have neighbours: young, old, immigrants, foreigners… but people who actually live here.” Her thoughts were echoed last month by her namesake, 78-year-old Rosa Alves, whose big concern, when she spoke to the Associated Press, was the number of tourist tuk-tuks chugging below her apartment in the Graça area. “For the last five, six years, this has become a mess,” she said. “There has been a serious change for the worse.” Talk of a referendum on restricting the activities of Airbnb et al is getting louder.

Whether this will come to pass is part of a wider conversation about how in-demand destinations cope with the pressure placed on their infrastructure by visitors hoping to see what the fuss is about. Either way, Lisbon is flush – with splendid sights, enchanted holidaymakers, and the cash they bring. Its giddy glow is unlikely to dim any time soon.

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Then versus now: Lisbon, rated