How mournful fado music offers a window into Lisbon's soul

National Geographic

3 days ago

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
It's nearing midnight in Alfama, Lisbon's oldest neighbourhood, when a lady in black steps into a taverna.
The bar staff scurry to turn off the lights, leaving only the flickering tapers of candles to illuminate her angular features and fringed shawl, which she's pulled tight around her shoulders. Elvira Giblott scans the room, as if reaching for a muse, then greets the two guitarists by the bar with the title of a song. In the restaurant, every fork is stilled, every wine glass untouched. She sings of Lisbon, of the beauty and struggle of life here, her voice filling the room before dropping to a velvety whisper. It's as if her heart is breaking before our eyes.
When, several songs later, the seasoned singer sweeps out of Tasca do Chico into the lamplit lane, it feels as if a spell has been broken — and something profound has been shared. In Alfama, the spiritual home of Lisbon's folk fado music, such encounters can be sought out in tascas — unfussy taverns like the one I'm sat in, where rich stews and meat dishes are served — or more upmarket fado houses, where etiquette is more strictly upheld. 'You should understand the difference between the establishments,' another performer, Joana Carvalhas, tells me when we get chatting at the end of her set. 'There are places where you may be asked to leave for talking during a performance, where the music is just as serious as the food.'
At the start of her career, but with the resonant vocals of someone twice her age, Joana represents the next generation of fadistas (fado singers). 'Of course, we now perform mainly for tourists, because we want to share fado and preserve it,' she explains, referring to the uptick in interest since UNESCO recognised the genre as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2011. 'But at the end of the working night, us musicians still gather, at traditional places like Tasca do Chico or Mesa de Frades to play simply for the love of it.' 'There are places where you may be asked to leave for talking during a [fado] performance, where the music is just as serious as the food,' says fado performer Joana Carvalhas. Photograph by Jenniffer Lima Pais
If the nights in Alfama are for fado, the days are for sightseeing. This is the Lisbon of postcards and daydreams, where cobblestone lanes are strung with colourful washing lines, vintage trams rattle around tight corners, and terraced miradouro (viewpoints) gaze out over a jumble of terracotta roofs and church towers towards the River Tagus. 'It wasn't always this popular,' walking tour guide Claudia Flores explains the next day in the shadow of the cathedral. 'For centuries, before the gentrification of the last decade, Alfama was a working-class neighbourhood. It was here and in nearby Mouraria, the old Moorish Quarter, that fado — meaning fate — was born 200 years ago, although many trace its roots back much further.'
Central to fado music, and to the Portuguese psyche, are the ideas of saudade (melancholic longing) and the humbling hand of destiny. It was in 1755, as Lisbon rode high on the colonial riches ushered in during the Age of Discovery, that disaster struck. The most destructive earthquake in European history hit the capital, compounded by fires and a tsunami, levelling all but hilly Alfama with its firm volcanic bedrock. Reconstruction of the city centre was elegant, as anyone who tours the Pombaline monuments of Baixa-Chiado can attest, but emptied the national coffers, paving the way for the repressive Estado Novo regime of the 20th century.
''Fado, football and Fatima' were dictator António de Oliveira Salazar's three Fs — a cynical credo designed to pacify and control the masses,' Claudia explains, as we arrive at an eye-catching mosaic, a portrait rising out of the calçada (patterned pavement), completed by artist Vhils in 2015. The figure is Amália Rodrigues, Portugal's greatest fadista, who died in 1999 at age 79. She was the first woman to be interred in the National Pantheon. 'I know her from the glamorous photos decorating the local tascas, framed large as if revering royalty or petitioning a saint,' she adds.
'Fado could be subversive, voicing the everyday complaints of ordinary people, so the state moved to regulate singers and their new lyrics,' she explains. 'Some bohemians took the genre underground.' But it was Amália Rodrigues who took it to stratospheric heights. The eight galleries of Ah, Amália flow through large-scale projections, a virtual reality experience and an eye-catching mirrored room. Photograph by the Ah, Amália: Living Experience The queen of fado
To better understand the evolution of fado, I've come to the arty warehouse regeneration complex of 8 Marvila, three miles up the coast from the city centre. Amid the area's restaurants and pop-up boutiques, a state-of-the-art, permanent exhibition dedicated to Amália Rodrigues opened in 2024.
'From a humble start in life, she elevated fado to a new dimension — she released 170 records and performed in more than 70 countries,' Louis Brézet from the Ah, Amália: Living Experience show tells me by way of introduction. 'The 20th century was a time when the Portuguese had few freedoms, especially women; when the country was seen as a backwater. Her life, and what she achieved, deserves this level of recognition.'
The eight galleries flow through large-scale projections, a virtual reality experience and an eye-catching mirrored room. Her poetry — which expanded fado's established themes and elevated its use of metaphor — pepper the biographical exhibits along with previously unreleased recordings, all weaving together a portrait of a woman, a city and a sound. Even the traditional look of fadistas — the costume jewellery, the fringed shawl, the black dress that's typically twisted and wrenched during emotional songs — is drawn from Amália's own style. But while so much of her legacy lives on in today's performers, it's still astonishing to reach Ah, Amália's theatrical finale: a full-size holographic performance by the singer at L'Olympia in Paris at the height of her vocal powers. No expense has been spared on the sound quality in the little theatre; my skin prickles with the raw ecstasy and palpable grief in her expression, as she soars through riffs and pulls phrases from her soul.
'People think of Amália as a sad woman, always in black — but she was a wit with a flamboyant fashion sense,' tour guide Mariana Gonçalves says across town at the House Museum Amália Rodrigues, in the chichi São Bento neighbourhood, where the singer lived for the last 44 years of her life. Behind us, wardrobes burst with colourful, diaphanous gowns; around her bedroom, costume jewellery and handbags jostle for prominence with Catholic tchotchkes. 'Faith, fate. Colour, darkness. The drama and contradictions of Amália's life are a mirror to her time.' In 2011, fado was recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Photograph by Mesa de Frades
This museum, run by the Amália Rodrigues Foundation, is a cosy counterpoint to the modernity of Ah, Amália, taking visitors behind the public image, into the time-warp salons where she threw extravagant bohemian parties, or to the sun-dappled back garden where, under the watchful gaze of Chico, Amália's aged parrot, afternoon fado concerts are staged up to three times a week. My guide also is keen to stress that while Amália's work was supported by the regime, the feeling was not mutual; quietly, she helped the poor and those in political exile.
Motioning to a grand piano and a bulbous, 12-string fado guitar on display, Mariana says: 'Amália never learned to play an instrument herself, but she had an incredible ear, singing in more than five languages. But it didn't matter if foreign audiences could understand her. She always said: 'Fado is meant to be felt, not explained.''
I return to Alfama over subsequent evenings, its fairytale quality only deepening as I roam its knotted lanes and discover — through chance findings and recommendations — much variety across its two dozen fado venues. Some restaurants, I learn, are too cavernous or touristy for my taste, their compulsory set menus a high price for entry. But others offer some of the most intimate and spellbinding evenings I've ever had in Lisbon — tiny A Baiuca, barely the size of a living room, where gutsy amateurs boldly debut; elegant Sala de Fado, newly opened in 2024, attracting legacy fadistas like Célia Leiria; and note-perfect Mesa de Frades, set in an 18th-century chapel adorned with historic azueljo tiles. If the nights in Alfama are for fado, the days are for sightseeing. This is the Lisbon of postcards and daydreams, where cobblestone lanes are strung with colourful washing lines, vintage trams rattle around tight corners, and terraced miradouro (viewpoints) gaze out over a jumble of terracotta roofs and church towers towards the River Tagus. Photograph by Getty Images, Artur Debat
At the latter, I try for a seat late at night, after the last dinner service has been cleared and the audience is thinning out. Behind the tall, gnarled chapel doors, there's an alchemy after midnight, as scheduled singers — like charismatic Flávia Pereira and velvet-voiced Matilde Sid, both eschewing the traditional black garb — start to share the floor with touring musicians.
From the altar mezzanine, the acoustics are breathtaking, and there's an untrammelled joy and spontaneity to proceedings that I would never have previously associated with the genre. I tap my feet along to upbeat songs — in particular the barnstorming Maria Lisboa, Uma Casa Portuguesa and Canto o Fado — chiming in for the refrains where invited by the performers. At others, like heart-rending Fado Português and Estranha Forma de Vida, I feel a slight prickling in my eyes, despite the language barrier.
'It means a lot to me when I see someone feel the emotion of the song,' Flávia tells me at the end of the night. She's one of Portugal's newer artists, subtly adapting this musical genre to her own style. She says her influences are globally selling, modern fadistas such as Mariza, Carminho and Ana Moura — women marching in the footsteps of Amália Rodrigues. 'It doesn't matter where the audience is from,' she concludes. 'Fado is in all our souls.' During June, Alfama celebrates Santos Populares with a month of street parties, which make the neighbourhood lively but crowed. Visit in September for Caixa Alfama, an annual fado festival.
Direct flights to Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport depart from a variety of UK airports, including London, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Bristol with airlines including British Airways, EasyJet and Ryanair. flytap.comba.com
Accommodation options across the city are vast and varied: stay at the four-star AlmaLusa Alfama, a renovated 12th-century building with Roman foundations that opened in 2024. Prices start from €369 (£313), B&B.
For more information, visit ah-amalia.pt ,visitlisboa.com, and amaliarodrigues.pt.
Published in the European Cities Collection 2025 by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).