Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon

The Ritz opened in 1959 as Portugal's answer to the great European hotels, and under Four Seasons it remains the city's one true full-service address. Salazar wanted a hotel to prove Lisbon could host the world. Porfírio Pardal Monteiro drew a ten-storey modernist block of concrete, glass and more than 40,000 square metres of marble, died in 1957, and Leonardo Castro Freire finished it for the opening in November 1959. The French decorator Henri Samuel then softened the severity, furnishing the public rooms somewhere between art deco and Louis XVI. The building is in two minds, and it doubles as a gallery: Almada Negreiros, Vieira da Silva and Carlos Botelho made work for these walls, and it hangs where you walk past it.

There are 282 rooms and suites, most with balconies looking over Parque Eduardo VII toward the river, and the categories differ less by decoration than by which way you face. The park view is the one to pay for. Refurbishment has run in phases rather than one long closure, so guests still contrast the freshened rooms with older ones that read as corporate. Ask what has been done on your floor. The ground floor is where the hotel makes its case, with marble corridors, the Almada Negreiros Lounge, the Ritz Bar, and a level of staffing the boutiques on this list cannot match.

Cura, the restaurant, holds a Michelin star, its fifth in a row under Rodolfo Lavrador, and two Suns in the 2026 Repsol guide. It has its own entrance and an open kitchen, so it works as a night out. Varanda handles breakfast and the buffet Lisbon books for itself, and the Ritz Bar is operating for now out of the Almada Negreiros Lounge. The spa has four treatment rooms and an 18-metre indoor lap pool, and since 2021 a heated outdoor pool and pool bar too. The 700 square metre gym opens from 6.30am to 9pm, and the roof carries a 400-metre running track with the best free view in town.

It sits above the park at the top of Avenida da Liberdade, which is the trade-off. The location is grand rather than atmospheric. You are thirty-four minutes on foot from Chiado, mostly downhill, and a taxi back. Rates are the highest in the city and the extras add up. The mid-century formality either charms you or keeps you at arm's length. Book it for a big trip where you want everything handled, for families who need space, a pool and babysitting, or for anyone who values a hotel that runs like a machine. For a first weekend walking out into old Lisbon, one of the Chiado hotels will serve you better.