Lisbon: ‘It’s as if the city had been dormant but has now awakened — with incredible new energy’

‘What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold!’ gasped Lord Byron in his poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He wrote that line — about one’s first impression of Portugal’s capital — in 1812. Lisbon is still wowing people in the summer of 2025.

It ranks in the top 10 cities worldwide when it comes to Michelin-starred restaurants per capita (it has 17). With its sea views, sunny weather and ornate tiled façades — which attract not just tourists, but digital nomads, in droves — Lisbon was named Europe’s ‘Best Urban Destination’ at the 2024 World Travel Awards.

Moreover, a record 35.1 million passengers used Lisbon airport last year — pretty much double the number who did so in 2014.

And then there’s its art scene, which is positively thriving. The design museum MUDE and the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM) both reopened to the public in 2024 after major renovations. A museum and five-star hotel called MACAM — Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins opened its doors earlier this year, as did an art centre in honour of the late Portuguese artist Julião Sarmento.

‘Everything is happening in Lisbon right now,’ says CAM’s director, Benjamin Weil. ‘It’s as if, in artistic terms, the city had been dormant for many years, but has now awakened — with incredible new energy.’

Art in Lisbon has experienced numerous highs, of course, dating back to the Portuguese Renaissance and beyond. The consensus is, however, that it experienced something of a low in the early part of this century, as Portugal itself faced up to a number of economic difficulties (starting with the adjustment to joining the eurozone in 1999).

A visit to CAM provides strong evidence that the good times are back. This summer it hosts Paula Rego and Adriana Varejão: Between Your Teeth, an excellent exhibition pairing the work of two artists with a shared interest in gender power dynamics.

More striking still is the €58-million redevelopment of CAM itself, conceived by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. New galleries and tall windows have been added to the original 1983 building, as has a 100-metre-long canopy leading up to the entrance. Panelled in wood, this hovers over visitors like the hull of a ship.

‘Part of the reason for the dynamism of today’s art scene is the way all parties collaborate,’ says Weil. ‘We encourage each other’s successes, in the belief that working together is the best way to ride the wave of change Lisbon is experiencing right now.’

Weil cites the launch of a Lisbon art consortium in 2024 as a prime example of collaboration. This brings different institutions together to discuss their programmes, align calendars, coordinate communications, and so on.

Let’s pause for a second, though, to unpack Weil’s phrase ‘wave of change’. He is alluding to the vigorous revival of Portugal’s economy in the past decade or so, something particularly marked in Lisbon. It was kickstarted by government measures intended to attract foreign investment, such as tax breaks and a Golden Visa programme (offering the right of residency, and ultimately citizenship, to those buying property over a certain price).

Opened in 2016, MAAT — Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology is a stunning expression of the prosperous new Lisbon. Owned by the foundation of the energy company EDP, it looks out confidently over the Tagus River. The museum is spread across two adjacent buildings — one a former thermoelectric power plant, the other a purpose-built structure that resembles a giant wave. It stages roughly a dozen contemporary art exhibitions each year, some of which intersect with architecture or technology.

‘There was a time, 15 years ago, when I travelled around the world and nobody cared about or talked about Lisbon,’ says MAAT’s deputy director, Sérgio Mah. ‘It was an isolated place, but those times have definitely gone. The city became fashionable, and foreign people started moving here.

‘There were many reasons for this, but one of them was that this is a safe city in a politically stable country. Today’s Lisbon has a real cosmopolitan feel, and many people interested in the arts are now here. It’s no coincidence that the level of cultural offering in the city has increased [in line with the change in the city at large].’

MAAT is currently staging a retrospective of the Canadian photographer Jeff Wall. For those who would prefer to see the work of young Portuguese artists, the museum is simultaneously hosting the EDP Foundation New Artists Award. Launched at the turn of the millennium and held biennially, this is sometimes described as Portugal’s version of the Turner Prize. An exhibition showing work by all six of this year’s finalists has been on view since April (with the artist and filmmaker Alice dos Reis newly announced as the winner).

The prize’s early winners include Joana Vasconcelos, Leonor Antunes and Carlos Bunga. Antunes and Bunga live in Berlin and Barcelona respectively, and it will be interesting — given the recent socio-economic shift — to see how many of the new wave of artists stay in Portugal.

Mah teaches part time at the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Fine Arts, where his lectures are attended by a host of foreign students.

‘They’re clearly attracted by everything that is happening in Lisbon right now,’ he says, ‘even if the trend is for most of them to skip classes when May comes around and disappear to the beach!’ (The city is roughly 20 minutes from the seaside.)

MAAT is in the historic neighbourhood of Belém in western Lisbon. It was from here that Portugal’s explorers set sail in the Age of Exploration. Past and present meet at the Cordoaria Nacional, an erstwhile factory for naval rope-making which today is an exhibition hall. Located close to MAAT, it recently hosted the eighth edition of the contemporary art fair ARCOlisboa, an offshoot of the older ARCOmadrid (which is held annually in the Spanish capital).

This year, 83 galleries took part — up from 44 in its first edition, in 2016 — testament to Lisbon’s burgeoning gallery scene. For those who wish to visit a selection of the city’s galleries, the upscale neighbourhood of Estrela is a good starting point, home to long-established spaces such as Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art and Pedro Cera, plus relative newcomers such as Madragoa.

Many of the wealthy expats settling in Lisbon acquire art — and they represent a significant new collector base. That said, two of the city’s best-known private collections of modern and contemporary work are much older, with roots dating back decades. One (featuring art by various 20th-century masters) was built up by the Portuguese businessman José Berardo and is today on long-term loan to the MAC/CCB museum.

The other is the 600-piece collection of property developer Armando Martins. Put together over the past 50 years, this has been housed since March in galleries — as well as corridors and hotel rooms — at MACAM — Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins.

‘The basic attraction of Lisbon is clear, from the sun and nearby beaches to the world’s best seafood,’ says MACAM’s director, Adelaide Ginga. ‘Nowadays, there’s a vibrant cultural scene attracting people too. A key to that vibrancy, I think, is increasing professionalisation. Masters degrees in cultural studies or cultural management are now available at Portuguese universities, for instance, in a way that they never used to be. Senior figures are being drawn here from abroad also, which adds to the professionalism.’

A case in point is the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, a sister institution to CAM, which shows the late financier Calouste Gulbenkian’s collection of art from ancient times to the early 20th century. Xavier F. Salomon, deputy director of the Frick Collection in New York, has just been appointed its director. A predecessor of his in the role, from 2015 to 2020, was Penelope Curtis, who left her post as director of Tate Britain to move to Portugal.

As for MACAM, it has a distinct claim to fame. Though many hotels own and show impressive art collections — the Four Seasons Ritz in Lisbon, for one — MACAM purports to be the world’s first museum-hotel. Which is to say, the first venue that’s a museum and a hotel in one.

Martins chose to convert the historic Palácio Condes da Ribeira Grande, which had been commissioned by the Marquis of Nisa in 1701, but was used as a school for most of the 20th century, and then lay empty. The permanent collection includes work made from 1980 onwards by well-known international figures such as John Baldessari, Olafur Eliasson, Isa Genzken and Marina Abramović.

It stands out, above all, however, for its sweep of works by Portuguese artists from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 20th: the likes of José Malhoa, Amadeu de Souza-Cardoso, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, José de Guimarães, Nadir Afonso, Júlião Sarmento, Paula Rego and Helena Almeida.

‘Lisbon used to be a cheap place to live, but that’s no longer true,’ says Ginga, striking a slight note of caution. The city has, in some ways, become a victim of its own success. Prices have risen markedly, above all for renting and buying property: in the past decade, house prices have jumped by 176 per cent.

Lisbon’s boom shows no sign of abating, however. A new airport is due to open in 2034, and a new high-speed railway is set to run between the city and Madrid, cutting the current journey time of 10 hours to three (this should be operational by 2030, the year Spain and Portugal co-host the FIFA World Cup along with Morocco).

In his chronicle of the Portuguese capital’s past, Queen of the Sea: A History of Lisbon, author Barry Hatton claimed that ‘Lisbon is a mood’ more than a city of bricks and mortar. Right now, the overriding mood is one of excitement.