Lisbon street art walk: Mouraria, Graça and Alfama on foot

The planner above holds eleven stops in walking order, from the top of Calçada da Glória to Santa Apolónia station. Untick any stop you want to skip and the route and its totals update. The hills are real: if your legs protest, drop a Graça mural rather than the Mouraria alleys, which are the heart of this walk. Allow a half-day with stops.

The route

Lisbon's street art is spread across the whole city, but the hills around the Baixa, above all to its east, pack a lot into walking distance. The walk starts on Calçada da Glória, drops to Rossio, then climbs into Mouraria, the old quarter below the castle that fado calls its cradle. It then heads north to Intendente, up to Graça for two Shepard Fairey murals, and down through Alfama to a giant tile wall and a last mural near the river.

Lisbon treats pavement and tiles as seriously as paint, so expect stone and ceramic as well as spray. Individual paintings change, the Glória panels most of all, so read the notes below as what was there when this page was last updated. Compared with our Berlin route, far more of the work here is commissioned, and craft trades are part of it.

The stops

Calçada da Glória panels

Lisbon City Council opened its urban art gallery, the Galeria de Arte Urbana, on this steep street in 2008, with large panels near the top that invited artists repaint every so often. Whatever is up will be gone within a year or two, which is the point. The street is also the track of the Glória funicular, out of service since it derailed on 3 September 2025 and killed 16 people. Walk down from the viewpoint at the top, with a quiet thought for what happened here; the city's lifts belong to a longer story about stairs, bridges and shortcuts. If the street is fenced off, start at Rossio.

Rossio wave pavement

Look down. The black and white waves across Rossio were laid from August 1848 to the end of 1849 by convict labourers working for Eusébio Furtado, the castle's military governor, over more than 8,700 square metres. It became the model for calçada portuguesa, the basalt and limestone paving you will walk on all day, and the wave motif, mar largo, reappears as far away as Copacabana. The pattern makes the flat square feel as if it is moving.

Beco das Farinhas portraits

The British photographer Camilla Watson, who lives and works in Mouraria, began her first street installation here in 2009: portraits of older residents, chosen together with the sitters, printed on wood and fixed along the alley they walk every day. The pictures are black and white, close and warm, and hung at eye level, so you meet them rather than look up at them. This is a lived-in lane with front doors a metre away. Keep your voice low and ask before photographing anyone at their door.

Rua do Capelão and Largo da Severa

Mouraria claims to be the cradle of fado, and Rua do Capelão makes the claim in stone: a Portuguese guitar carved into a marble block honours the neighbourhood's music. Watson's second project runs along this street and the lanes around it, large photographs of fado singers past and present on house walls. Largo da Severa is named after Maria Severa, the nineteenth century singer remembered as one of fado's first stars, whose house stands on the square. In the evening a guitar may drift through an open door, the best way to meet the music.

Mariana Duarte Santos on Rua Nova do Desterro

Walk north past Martim Moniz for a quieter piece. On the side wall of a church in Rua Nova do Desterro, Mariana Duarte Santos painted a grocer from a shop that traded nearby in the 1950s, working from a photograph by Artur Pastor in the Lisbon Municipal Archive. It went up in 2021 for the city's urban art office and the Arroios parish. This is what Lisbon's commissioned murals often do best: local memory at the scale of the street, without spectacle.

Viúva Lamego tile façade, Largo do Intendente

A couple of minutes east, Largo do Intendente opens out. On its edge stands the old Viúva Lamego tile factory, built between 1849 and 1865 and listed as a building of public interest since 1978. Its whole front is clad in nineteenth century figurative tiles by Luís Ferreira, known as Ferreira das Tabuletas, allegorical figures that turn a workshop into a billboard. Production now happens in Sintra, but the firm still makes tiles, including the panel you will see later by the flea market.

Shepard Fairey on Rua Natália Correia

Now the climb to Graça. In July 2017 the American artist Shepard Fairey painted two murals here while showing work in the neighbourhood. On Rua Natália Correia, across a four storey wall, a woman in uniform and beret holds a rifle with a flower in its barrel, which in Lisbon cannot help recalling the carnations of 25 April 1974. Step back to the opposite pavement to see it whole, and watch for traffic in these narrow streets.

Fairey and Vhils on Rua da Senhora da Glória

A few minutes away, Fairey's second wall was shared with Vhils, the Lisbon artist known for carving portraits out of plaster and brick rather than painting them. One woman's face is split down the middle: Fairey's half in flat red and ornament, the Vhils half chiselled into the front of a three storey building. Look closely at the join, where poster graphics meet broken render. It is the clearest lesson on the walk in how two techniques read from across the street and from a step away.

Vhils' Amália in calçada

Head down through Graça into Alfama. On a small square between Rua de São Tomé and the Calçada do Menino de Deus, Vhils designed a portrait of the fado singer Amália Rodrigues that the city's pavers set stone by stone in July 2015, for the cover of a tribute album. There is no carving and no paint, only the same black and white stones you crossed at Rossio, turned into a face. Alfama's lanes are steep and confusing, so trust the map here rather than instinct.

André Saraiva tile panel, Jardim Botto Machado

East along the ridge, Jardim Botto Machado sits by Campo de Santa Clara, where the Feira da Ladra flea market sets up. Along its wall runs André Saraiva's tile panel, unveiled in October 2016: 188 metres long and more than 52,000 tiles, which the artist painted himself at the Viúva Lamego factory. It is cartoonish, crowded and full of jokes. Walk its full length, because the details reward slowness. On market days the square fills up, so come early or late.

PichiAvo's Poseidon

The last stop is downhill on Calçada de Santa Apolónia, by the station. In 2018 the Spanish duo PichiAvo painted their first Lisbon mural here across a four storey wall: Poseidon as a classical statue, broken up with the colours and shapes of graffiti. The sea god faces the Tagus, which is the joke and the point at once. The station has metro and trains, and the riverside is close if you want to sit by the water.

Practical notes

• Mouraria and Alfama lanes stay shaded for much of the day, while the big Graça walls are easiest to photograph in soft light, so an overcast morning is no loss.
• The paving is beautiful and slippery. Wear shoes with grip, especially after rain, and take the Graça climb slowly.
• Older guides still list the Fado Vadio mural on the Escadinhas de São Cristóvão. It has gone: the building was demolished after a fire.
• These are homes before they are sights. Keep alleys clear and voices down at night.
• Paint only where you have permission. The walls on this route were painted with the agreement of the city or the owners.
• If you would rather draw than photograph, a pocket sketching kit suits this walk; Largo do Intendente and the Graça viewpoint both have benches.

Further reading

A guidebook helps with transport and neighbourhoods. Rafael Schacter's atlas places Lisbon's scene among other cities, and Gabriel Campanario's book is for anyone tempted to draw the tile façades instead.

These picks come from publisher details and published reviews rather than our own testing.

Questions

Can I still see the Fado Vadio mural in Mouraria?

No. The mural on the Escadinhas de São Cristóvão was painted in 2012 by a group of artists, but the building it covered was demolished after a fire. It now survives only in photographs, so it is not on this route.

Will the Calçada da Glória panels look like the photos I have seen?

Probably not. The panels are repainted every so often by invited artists, so any photo older than a year or two may show work that has gone. Treat whatever is up on the day as the current exhibition.

Is street art legal in Lisbon?

Painting is legal where the owner or the city has given permission, as on the Glória panels and the commissioned walls on this walk. Painting other walls without consent is illegal. Looking and photographing from the street is always fine.