Pink Street, Lisbon

The red-light street of Cais do Sodré

Cais do Sodré was the city's working port frontage, and from the 1920s until about 1980 Rua Nova do Carvalho, one street back from the quays, was where the sailors and dockers went at night. The names that survive from that period are still on the doors: the Jamaica, the Europa, the Tamisa, now the Tóquio, the Texas Bar, now the Musicbox, and the Shangri-La, now the Bar do Cais. Pensão Amor, the pension of love, was a boarding house that rented rooms by the hour, which is the polite way the Portuguese Wikipedia page puts it.

When the port moved and the sailors stopped coming, the street kept the bars and lost the customers, and by the 2000s it was a place the city told visitors to avoid after dark.

2011: the paint; 2013: the pavement

In 2011 the Associação do Cais do Sodré, the local traders' association, with the city council's backing, had the roadway painted pink from end to end as the signature of a plan to relaunch the street as a night-out destination. The bars that reopened kept the old names and the old décor and sold the history as the attraction: Pensão Amor became a bar with a burlesque stage and a bookshop of erotica in what had been the rooms, and the Musicbox under the railway viaduct became a live venue. In 2013 the architect José Adrião's scheme levelled the roadway with the pavements so that tables could go outside, and the pink was repainted as a surface rather than a stripe.

The umbrella canopy that hangs over the street in summer, the photograph most people come for, is a later addition that the Wikipedia page does not date, so we do not either. In 2015 the New York Times put Rua Nova do Carvalho on a list of the twelve best streets in Europe, and the crowd has not thinned since.

Pensão Amor, at the Cais do Sodré end, is the one to see even if you do not drink: the boarding house is intact upstairs, the bar is in the old reception and the rooms hold a stage, a bookshop and a lot of red velvet; it is where the queue is on a Saturday. Musicbox is the live venue under the railway arch at the far end, with gigs and DJs that run past the point where the rest of the street has emptied, and it charges on the door on gig nights. Between them are the Tóquio, the Bar do Cais and the Jamaica, the survivors of the sailors' era, plus a decade's worth of cocktail bars, a tapas counter or two and the terraces that spill onto the levelled roadway. Sol e Pescado and the Viking are names visitors quote for the street; neither appears in the Wikipedia history, so we list them as bars people mention rather than as anything more.

The night runs late by design: nothing much is open before 18:00, the terraces fill from 21:00, and the street is at its peak between midnight and 02:00 from Thursday to Saturday. Sunday to Wednesday it is quieter and the terraces close earlier. Drinks are priced above the Baixa and below the Chiado hotels; nothing here is on any list this site can cite, so the where to eat page does not send you here for dinner, and the nightlife page sets it against the Bairro Alto grid up the hill, where the bars are smaller, the street drinking is the point and the noise ordinance closes doors at 03:00.

• Pensão Amor: the former boarding house, bar, stage and bookshop; the queue on Saturday
• Musicbox: live music under the railway arch, door charge on gig nights
• Tóquio, Bar do Cais, Jamaica: the sailors'-era survivors under new management
• Terraces on the levelled roadway from 21:00; peak midnight to 02:00, Thursday to Saturday

No official crime figure is published for the street, so we quote none. What the tourist police say about Lisbon in general applies here in concentrated form: pickpocketing in crowds, drink-related trouble late at night, and men on the pavement offering sunglasses, then quietly something else, which a shake of the head ends. The street is lit, busy and patrolled on weekend nights, and the danger it once had, when it was a port quarter with no one on it, is the one thing the 2011 relaunch removed. The safety and scams page has the tourist police station, which is in Palácio Foz on Praça dos Restauradores, and the emergency number 112.

Practical rules: phone in a zipped pocket, bag in front, a set budget in cash if you do not want to hand a card across a crowded bar, and the last Metro from Cais do Sodré at about 01:00 or the Rede da Madrugada night buses from 23:30 to 05:35 afterwards. A taxi rank stands outside the station. Women travelling alone report the street as busy rather than threatening; the walk back up Rua do Alecrim to the Chiado at 02:00 is uphill, lit and populated, and the Baixa side streets at that hour are quieter than here, not safer.

• Risk: pickpockets in the crush after midnight; not violence
• Tourist police: Palácio Foz, Praça dos Restauradores; emergency 112
• Getting home: Metro to about 01:00, night buses 23:30–05:35, taxi rank at Cais do Sodré
• Sunglasses sellers: a shake of the head ends it

Rua Nova do Carvalho runs parallel to the river one block north of Cais do Sodré station, between Rua do Alecrim at the west end and Rua de São Paulo at the east; from the Metro exit turn away from the river and it is the second street. The Time Out Market is two minutes away across the avenue, Praça do Comércio is ten minutes east along the river, and the Chiado is eight minutes up Rua do Alecrim. Bus 22B, the replacement for the closed Bica funicular, starts at Cais do Sodré and climbs to Príncipe Real every 30 minutes until 20:25, which is before the street wakes up; the funiculars page has the route. The Cascais-line train and the Cacilhas ferry are in the same station, so the street is also where a day at the beach or across the river ends.

When to come: 09:00 to 11:00 for the photograph, when the roadway is empty, the shutters are down and the umbrellas are lit by the sun instead of the bars; 21:00 on a weeknight for a terrace; after midnight on Friday or Saturday for the version in the guidebooks. The umbrella canopy is seasonal and not announced, so a visit outside the summer may find the street bare.

• Metro: Cais do Sodré, green line, 2 min; last trains about 01:00
• On foot: Time Out Market 2 min, Chiado 8 min, Praça do Comércio 10 min
• Photograph: 09:00–11:00; bars: from 21:00; peak: midnight–02:00, Thursday to Saturday

At the end of it. The three-day itinerary closes its second evening with dinner at the Time Out Market and a drink here, and the two-day plan sends you past it on the way from the Cacilhas ferry. By day it is a two-minute detour from the market to the Bica funicular street.

The bar quarters are compared on the nightlife page, the whole west side of the centre on the neighbourhoods page, and the rest of the Lisbon guide starts from the homepage.