49 Fun Facts About Lisbon

Which saint, born in Lisbon and honoured there with a June festival, is named for an Italian city?

Anthony of Padua was baptised Fernando in Lisbon and took the name Anthony only when he became a Franciscan friar; Padua is where he died and is buried.

Lisbon's Museu Nacional do Azulejo celebrates which art form seen on façades across the city?

Painted ceramic tiles. The museum fills a convent founded by Queen Leonor in 1509, and one long tile panorama there shows Lisbon as it stood before the 1755 earthquake.

According to a persistent legend repeated by classical authors, Lisbon was founded by which mythical hero?

Ulysses. Roman writers respelled the town's old name, Olisipo, as Ulyssippo to fit the tale, though where the name really comes from is unknown.

Which sour-cherry liqueur is a Lisbon speciality, sold by the shot at its own dedicated bars?

Ginjinha. Regulars order it com elas or sem elas, with or without the soaked cherries in the glass, at tiny bars like the one a Galician named Espinheira opened in the 19th century.

Which king took Lisbon from the Moors in 1147 with the help of crusader knights?

Afonso Henriques won the city after a siege of about four months, helped by crusaders bound for the Holy Land; one of them, Gilbert of Hastings, stayed on as Lisbon's bishop.

Lisbon replaced which city as the capital of medieval Portugal?

Coimbra. The older capital later won something back: Portugal's first university, founded in Lisbon, moved between the two cities and settled in Coimbra for good in the 16th century.

King Sigurd's crusaders, who won a battle at Lisbon on their way to Jerusalem, had sailed from which kingdom?

Norway. Sigurd I's sixty ships fought their way down the Iberian coast, and his saga calls Lisbon 'half Christian and half heathen' before the fleet sailed on to the Holy Land.

Which Lisbon quarter, the city's oldest, kept its medieval maze of lanes because the 1755 earthquake largely spared it?

Alfama. Under Moorish rule it was the whole of Lisbon, and only later did the city spread west onto the low ground that the earthquake wrecked.

The great earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1755 struck on the morning of which feast?

All Saints' Day. Many people were in church for the holy day and died when the buildings fell; a tsunami and fires across the city then completed the ruin.

Which philosopher answered the 1755 Lisbon earthquake with a poem attacking the belief that all is for the best?

Voltaire. His 'Poem on the Lisbon Disaster' mocked the comfort that whatever is, is right, and he later sent the hero of Candide through the same earthquake.

Which minister of Joseph I rebuilt Lisbon after 1755 and gave his name to its grid-planned lower town?

The Marquis of Pombal is credited, perhaps wrongly, with the order to bury the dead and care for the living; he then cleared the ruins for a grid of straight streets instead of rebuilding the medieval town.

Lisbon's rebuilt lower town is anchored by two great squares: the Praça do Comércio and which other?

Praça do Rossio. Its official name is Praça de Dom Pedro IV, after the king whose statue tops the column at its centre, but the older name Rossio is the one that stuck.

Vasco da Gama's fleet left Lisbon in 1497 and rounded which cape to reach India by sea?

The Cape of Good Hope. Bartolomeu Dias had rounded it in 1488 and gone no farther; da Gama pressed on across the Indian Ocean and reached Calicut in May 1498.

Lisbon's Belém Tower is a showpiece of which exuberant 16th-century style?

Manueline. Its stonework is carved with ropes, anchors and armillary spheres, celebrating the sea voyages whose spice trade paid for such buildings.

Belém Tower bears a carving of which animal, landed in Lisbon in 1515 and drawn by Dürer from hearsay?

A rhinoceros, the first seen alive in Europe since Roman times. The king sent it on as a gift to the Pope, but it died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy.

Which poet, who celebrated da Gama's voyage in The Lusiads, is entombed beside him at the Jerónimos Monastery?

Both were moved to carved tombs in the nave in 1880; da Gama's men had prayed on the site the night before sailing in 1497.

Belém's Monument to the Discoveries first went up as a temporary showpiece for which event?

The 1940 Portuguese World Fair. That version was plaster on a light frame and was pulled down; the stone monument seen today went up in 1960, 500 years after Henry the Navigator's death.

Which Lisbon religious house is credited with first making the pastel de nata custard tart?

The Jerónimos. Facing closure after the 1820 revolution, its monks sold the tarts through a nearby sugar refinery, whose owners took on the recipe and opened the Pastéis de Belém bakery in 1837.

Fado, Lisbon's music of loss and resignation, shares its name with the Portuguese word for what?

Fate. The songs are thought to have grown up among Lisbon's sailors, dock workers and tavern-goers, and in 2011 UNESCO listed fado as part of humanity's intangible cultural heritage.

Which Portuguese word, meaning longing or a sense of irreparable loss, sums up the mood of fado?

Saudade. Its best-known voice was Amália Rodrigues, the 'Queen of Fado'; when she died in 1999, Portugal declared three days of national mourning.

Which landmark commissioned by King John V came through Lisbon's 1755 earthquake almost undamaged?

The Águas Livres Aqueduct. Its arches stride more than 200 feet above the Alcântara valley, yet they stood while the convent, the palace and the opera house in the city below were wrecked.

Lisbon's 25 de Abril Bridge was inaugurated in 1966 under what name?

Ponte Salazar, after the dictator who ordered it built. A railway deck planned from the start was left out of the 1966 bridge and did not open until 1999.

The 25 de Abril Bridge takes its current name from the date of which event?

The Carnation Revolution. Hardly a shot was fired on 25 April 1974, and the name came from Celeste Caeiro, a restaurant worker who handed carnations to the soldiers in the street.

The Treaty of Lisbon, signed in the city in 2007, changed the rules of which organisation?

The European Union. The treaty rescued much of a constitution that French and Dutch voters had rejected in 2005, and its Article 50 set out how a member state could leave, the clause later used for Brexit.

Which Expo '98 attraction, built on a pier in an artificial lagoon, still draws about a million visitors a year?

The Oceanário. Its four habitat tanks ring one vast central tank and are arranged to look like part of it, so that visitors seem to gaze into a single ocean.

Which birds flank the ship on Lisbon's coat of arms, in legend the guardians of St Vincent's body?

Ravens. In the legend they kept scavengers off the martyr's body, and the arms show the ship that carried his relics from the Algarve to Lisbon in the 12th century.

Lisbon's Cristo Rei statue was built in thanksgiving for what?

Portugal being spared World War II. The country's bishops pledged the monument at Fátima in 1940 as a plea to be kept out of the war, and it was inaugurated in 1959.

Which Lisbon club won the European Cup in both 1961 and 1962?

Benfica. In the 1962 final Ferenc Puskás scored a hat-trick for the Spanish champions and still lost 5-3, as the young Eusébio struck twice for the Lisbon side.

Before Cristiano Ronaldo, which graduate of Sporting's Lisbon academy won the Ballon d'Or, in 2000?

Luís Figo. He joined Sporting's academy at 12, and his world-record move from Barcelona to their fiercest rivals in 2000 so angered Barça fans that a pig's head was later thrown at him.

In 2014 Lisbon's Estádio da Luz staged the first Champions League final between two clubs from which city?

Madrid. Atlético led until Sergio Ramos headed Real level in the 93rd minute, and Real ran away with extra time to win 4-1 and claim 'La Décima', their tenth European Cup.

Which poet was a famous customer of A Brasileira, the best-known café in the Chiado?

Fernando Pessoa. A bronze statue of him sits at a table outside; in life he published just one book in Portuguese and wrote much of his work as invented poets he called heteronyms.

Which Lisbon district, laid out on a grid in the 16th century, is now the centre of the city's nightlife?

Bairro Alto. By day its narrow cobbled streets are quiet and feel residential; only after dark do the bars and restaurants fill and the crowds arrive.

Lisbon's iron Santa Justa lift carries passengers from the Baixa up to which square?

Largo do Carmo. The lift ran on steam when it opened in 1902 and was converted to electricity only in 1907; its engineer, Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard, had already built the city's funiculars.

In 2012 the Lisbon Metro's Red Line was extended three stops beyond Oriente to reach which destination?

The airport. Lisbon's metro opened in 1959 as the first in Portugal, yet air travellers waited more than half a century for a station under the terminal.

Lisbon's airport is named for which opponent of the dictatorship, murdered by its secret police in 1965?

Humberto Delgado. The 'Fearless General' ran for president in 1958 promising to dismiss the dictator, lost a rigged vote and was killed by the secret police seven years later.

Fleeing Napoleon in 1807, the Portuguese court left Lisbon and ruled its empire for over a decade from which city?

Rio de Janeiro. The royal family sailed under British escort days before French troops marched in, and the colonial port stayed the capital of the whole empire until the king came home in 1821.

Which Elizabethan sea captain co-led the failed 1589 English attack on Lisbon to install a Portuguese pretender?

Francis Drake. He and John Norris landed the pretender António, Prior of Crato, but the Portuguese rising they counted on never came and the expedition went home in failure.

The Lisbon coup of 1 December 1640 ended sixty years of Spanish rule and gave Portugal which new royal house?

Braganza. A band of nobles seized the palace, killed the secretary of state and deposed the Spanish king's vicereine; two weeks later the Duke of Braganza was crowned John IV.

The victims of the Lisbon massacre of 1506 were 'New Christians', forced converts from which faith?

Judaism. Portugal's Jews had been baptised by royal decree in 1497, and nine years later a dispute over a supposed miracle in a Lisbon church set off days of killing aimed at them.

Gold from which colony funded King John V's Baroque churches and theatres in Lisbon?

Brazil. The crown took a fifth of the gold mined there, and John V spent it lavishly on building, above all on the vast palace at Mafra outside Lisbon.

Which tech conference moved to Lisbon in 2016?

Web Summit. Paddy Cosgrave launched it in Dublin and moved it when it outgrew the city, drawn by Lisbon's supply of hotel rooms and by the arena built for Expo '98.

As of 2025, roughly what share of Portugal's people live in the Lisbon metropolitan area?

30%. That is about three in ten: the metropolitan area holds some three million people, yet only about one in five of them lives inside the city limits of Lisbon itself.

Portugal's national archive, the Torre do Tombo, is named for a tower of which Lisbon landmark, its medieval home?

São Jorge Castle. A tombo is a register, not a tomb; the royal records sat in a castle tower until the 1755 earthquake, when the keeper Manuel da Maia led the rescue of its contents.

Roman Lisbon, then called Olisipo, was known across the empire for which export, shipped to Rome in amphorae?

Fish sauce, known as garum. It was made by salting fish and their innards until they broke down into a liquor, yet the empire's elite prized it as a luxury.

Belém Palace, a former royal residence, is now occupied by whom?

The President of Portugal. King John V bought the riverside estate from a count and made it a royal palace; when the monarchy fell in 1910 the new republic took it over for its head of state.

What forced King Juan I of Castile to abandon his four-month siege of Lisbon in 1384?

Plague in his camp. An epidemic tore through the Castilian ranks while Nuno Álvares Pereira harried them from outside, and the king raised the siege on 3 September and went home.

Which architect designed Lisbon's Gare do Oriente, the railway station built for Expo '98?

Santiago Calatrava. A forest of white columns like giant trees holds up its glass roof, and he raised the tracks so the line no longer cut the city off from the river.

Lisbon's National Coach Museum opened in 1905 inside which kind of royal building at Belém Palace?

A riding school. Queen Amélia had the royal family's ceremonial carriages gathered in the palace's old riding arena to keep them safe and put them on show.

Which Lisbon park, a planted forest, covers about a tenth of the municipality?

Monsanto. Its hills had been farmed until they were all but bare, and the forest dates only from the 1930s, when a government decree had them replanted.