Chiado, Lisbon

The name, about 1567

Chiado was the nickname of António Ribeiro, a sixteenth-century poet and friar known for his sharp tongue; the word means a squeak or a creak, and the toponym is recorded from about 1567 for the area around the church of the Mártires where he lived. His statue sits on Largo do Chiado opposite A Brasileira, a few metres from Pessoa's. The quarter grew up on the slope between the medieval city and the new Bairro Alto, escaped the worst of 1755 because it stood on rock rather than river silt, and in the nineteenth century became the address for the theatres, the clubs, the bookshops and the department stores of a capital that wanted to look like Paris.

The opera house, the bookshop, the café

The Teatro Nacional de São Carlos on Rua Serpa Pinto is the opera house of the 1790s, built after the earthquake destroyed the court's theatre and modelled on the San Carlo in Naples; it still runs an opera and concert season, and the only way inside is a ticket for one. The Livraria Bertrand on Rua Garrett, founded in 1732 and on this street since the rebuild after 1755, holds the Guinness record as the oldest bookshop still trading, and stamps a certificate in the books you buy to prove it. A Brasileira, a few doors up, opened in 1905 as a shop for Brazilian coffee and became the café of the writers of the 1910s and 1920s; Fernando Pessoa's bronze sits at a table on the terrace, and the queue to sit beside it is longer than the queue for coffee.

Inside, the counter price is a fraction of the terrace price, which is the rule for every café on the hill.

25 August 1988: the fire, and Siza Vieira's rebuild

On the morning of 25 August 1988 a fire that started in the Grandella department store on Rua do Carmo spread through eighteen buildings on the slope between the Baixa and Rua Garrett, destroying the Grandella, the Armazéns do Chiado and the shops and flats around them: about 8,000 square metres burned, two people died, 73 were injured and two to three hundred residents lost their homes. The city gave the rebuild to Álvaro Siza Vieira, who kept every façade that would stand and put new buildings behind them, with the Armazéns do Chiado reopened as a shopping centre whose escalators now do the Baixa-to-Chiado climb for free. The work ran from 1989 to about 1999, and Siza's last piece of it, the Terraços do Carmo between the convent and the shopping centre, opened in 2015: the stepped terraces that look down Rua de Santa Justa are the fire's best legacy, and the free replacement for the closed lift.

Leave Baixa-Chiado Metro by the Rua Garrett exit and you are on the hill's main street, with the Armazéns do Chiado on the right and Bertrand and A Brasileira ahead on the left. Turn right up Calçada do Sacramento to Largo do Carmo for the Carmo Convent, thirty minutes inside, then the Terraços do Carmo beside it for the Baixa view. Back on Rua Garrett, walk up to Largo do Chiado and Praça Luís de Camões, the square with the poet's statue where the Chiado ends and the Bairro Alto begins; Rua da Misericórdia climbs from here to the Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara in six minutes, past the Igreja de São Roque, and that viewpoint is the castle-and-river panorama that the closed Glória funicular used to deliver.

Come back down Rua do Alecrim towards the river for the Pink Street and the Time Out Market at Cais do Sodré, or turn left along Rua Serpa Pinto for the São Carlos and the Museu do Chiado.

• Baixa-Chiado Metro, Rua Garrett exit → Calçada do Sacramento → Largo do Carmo: 4 min
• Carmo Convent, 30 min; Terraços do Carmo, 5 min
• Rua Garrett → Largo do Chiado → Praça Luís de Camões: 5 min
• Rua da Misericórdia → São Roque → Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara: 6 min uphill
• Down Rua do Alecrim to Cais do Sodré: 8 min

Rua Garrett, Rua do Carmo and Rua Nova do Almada are the shopping streets: international chains in the rebuilt blocks, the Armazéns do Chiado shopping centre with a food court on its top floor, and between them the shops that survived the fire and the century, a glove counter on Rua do Carmo that has fitted gloves across a tiny counter since 1925, the Bertrand, a few stationers and the tile and cork shops that sell to visitors. The Manteigaria on Rua do Loreto, at the Camões end, is the custard-tart bakery whose tart the pastéis de Belém page compares with the original, and the queue at its counter is the shortest test of whether the Belém tram is worth it.

Restaurants: the hill has more of them per street than anywhere in the city, from the terraces on Largo do Carmo to the dining rooms around the São Carlos, and none of them appears on a list this site can cite, so we name none. The couvert rule applies: the bread, olives and cheese put on the table unasked are charged if touched. The where to eat page names places by source, and the food and wine walk eats in the tascas of the streets below.

• Shops: Rua Garrett, Rua do Carmo, Rua Nova do Almada; Armazéns do Chiado for the escalators and the food court
• Manteigaria, Rua do Loreto: the Chiado custard tart
• Restaurants: many, none cited here; send the couvert back untouched if unwanted

The case: Baixa-Chiado station on the blue and green lines puts the airport at one change, Praça do Comércio and the Rossio are eight flat minutes down the hill, the Alfama climb starts fifteen minutes east, Cais do Sodré for the Belém train and the Cascais beaches is eight minutes down Rua do Alecrim, and the evening is on the doorstep in either direction. It is the one central quarter where a rolling suitcase works, provided the hotel is on Rua Garrett, Rua Ivens, Rua Serpa Pinto or the streets below Largo do Chiado and not up the stairs of the Bairro Alto side. The catch: it is the most expensive address in the country by Wikipedia's account of its property market, and anything with a window onto Rua da Misericórdia, Rua do Norte or the streets above Praça Luís de Camões hears the Bairro Alto until the 03:00 closing hour.

Ask for a room at the back or on the Baixa side, and the hill is quiet from midnight. The full comparison of the areas, with walk minutes and noise, is on where to stay; the homepage's short version is that Chiado is the compromise between the Baixa's convenience and the Bairro Alto's noise. The rest of the Lisbon guide starts from the homepage.