Rua Nova do Carvalho: Pink Street and the Sailors' Quarter
Why is it significant?
Walk under the bridge that carries Rua do Alecrim over your head, and you are on Rua Nova do Carvalho, better known as Pink Street. The roadway is painted a shameless shade of pink, and bar signs crowd both sides, one on top of the other. By day it is sleepy.
Key Facts
| Place | Rua Nova do Carvalho: Pink Street and the Sailors' Quarter |
|---|---|
| Address | Rua Nova do Carvalho, 1200 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.70740, -9.14370 |
| Part of Walk | Ginjinha, Salt Cod and Custard Tarts: A Lisbon Food Walk from the Baixa to Cais do Sodré |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk under the bridge that carries Rua do Alecrim over your head, and you are on Rua Nova do Carvalho, better known as Pink Street. The roadway is painted a shameless shade of pink, and bar signs crowd both sides, one on top of the other.
By day it is sleepy. By night it is one of the busiest drinking streets in Lisbon. But while the paint is new, the reputation is old. This was the sailors' quarter of the port. Ships from Britain, Scandinavia and northern Europe tied up nearby, and their crews came ashore with wages in their pockets and only a few days to spend them.
Look at the old signs. Some bars still carry the names of distant ports, a way of telling homesick crews that this was their place. Behind those doors there were dance halls, cabarets and brothels, and the quarter had a hard reputation that the respectable city on the hill above preferred not to mention. A few of today's bars have kept the red velvet and the tarnished mirrors of that era.
And sailors had to eat. This was a world of tascas, small taverns serving cheap, hot food at almost any hour. Fried fish. Iscas, thin slices of liver in wine and garlic. A bifana, the garlicky pork sandwich. And a bowl of caldo verde, the kale and potato soup with a slice of chouriço, which still ends many a long Lisbon night. Late-night eating is a Lisbon instinct, and it grew in places like this, where the clock followed the tides and not the church bells.
In the early 2010s the city set out to clean up the quarter, and painted the street pink, partly as a wink at its red-light past. The crowds that followed have made it lively, noisy, and a sore point for neighbours who need to sleep. Now walk down toward the river, across the square with the statue of the Duke of Terceira, to the waterfront beside the ferry terminal. The last stop is the water itself.