Lisbon on Foot

How it started

The first version was drawn on the back of a receipt for Rosie, the first time she visited. She wanted to know how to get from my flat in Graça down to the river without a map app, so I sketched the stairs, the laundry lines, the café with the good bica and the corner where the 28 tram nearly takes your elbow off.

She brought it home and stuck it on her fridge. A friend of hers asked for a copy, then a friend of that friend, and before long I was drawing the same walk again and again on whatever paper was lying around.

Where it is now

Lisbon on Foot is a folded A3 sheet covering seven neighbourhoods: Graça, Alfama, Mouraria, Baixa, Príncipe Real, Campo de Ourique and Marvila. Each one gets a single walk of about an hour, drawn by hand, with the places I actually go — a tiled fountain, a cheap lunch, a viewpoint with no seats where you sit on the warm wall.

I reprint it every spring and autumn at the copy shop on Rua da Graça, two hundred copies at a time, and correct whatever has closed or moved. Senhor Abel keeps a stack by his till, and a few cafés leave them out for anyone who asks. It’s free, and it always will be.

A few rules I keep

• Every walk ends somewhere you can sit down and eat.
• Nothing goes on the map unless I’ve been at least three times.
• Hills are marked honestly. Lisbon is mostly hills.

If you’re coming to visit, my longer thoughts on wandering live under Travel, starting with the year I stopped planning trips.