One of the great pleasures of Lisbon is exploring the city and hunting for hidden spots.
Even in newer neighbourhoods you can always find unique features.
Think for example of Chiado, the neighbourhood past Rossio on the way up to the higher areas of the Bairro Alto.
In the summer of 1988 a terrible fire lit up the Lisbon night while the flames ravaging many eighteenth century buildings and the firefighters were kept at bay by a number of ugly huge concrete flower pots, on Rua do Carmo, preventing the access of the emergency vehicles.
It started in an old department store, that used to be next to where the FNAC store is nowadays and it changed forever that part of the city, leaving scars, physical and psychological, that took decades to heal.
Architect Sisa Vieira was called in to project the reconstruction and he ensured that, at least the facades can still remind Lisboners and tourists what it looked like before.
As you go up the Rua do Carmo, after you pass the Santa Justa lift on your left hand side, you see this dark green milk truck of sorts, which is a record shop – at least it was when there were still records (vinyl) being produced. An old record shop called Discoteca do Carmo never reopened and this truck, permanently parked here on the pedestrian street is also a kind of memento to it, forever playing fado music.
A few steps further up, there is an opening on one of the buildings with a stairway enabling access to the back of the buildings. Here you find a yard with some cafés and a terrace where you can have a light meal, but if you go further along the building you find after a sharp bend to the right, at the end of a passageway, a unique bookshop.
It is one of those bookshops you enjoy even if you don’t understand a word of what is written everywhere or if you prefer to get your books online or don’t read at all 😉 but anyway here you’ll understand quite a lot as they stock a fair number of foreign language titles. The atmosphere is really unique and enhanced by a certain uniformity of the book binds that are mostly published by the same company and thus have a common aesthetic.
This place is only a 10’ walk from The Elevator Hostel so come here at any time for a moment of quietness in this very new, very old area of Lisbon.
the elevator hostel 