2 Best things to see & do in Lisbon

Lisboans are famous for their love of fado, a mournful, melancholic genre of song performed by a singer accompanied by an acoustic guitar and a twelve-string guitarra portuguesa. See it performed live in casas de fado in the Alfama, the oldest district of the city.

This colour-fantastic, 19th-century Romanticist castle, built on a rock in the Sintra Mountains, is now a national monument and museum but was previously a summer residence for the Portuguese royal family.

Built in 1854 on the orders of King Ferdinand II, when the original monastery on the site was burnt down, it’s uniquely rich with decoration and symbolism – much at the best of the king and his wife Queen Maria.