Lisbon has certainly become trendy. The city is one of the sunniest in Europe and combines modern infrastructure with historic charm. The city’s increasing appeal to tourists, expats and digital nomads is driving economic investment and enhancing local development. However, it is also presenting new challenges and opportunities for residents and stakeholders in the cultural sector.
The lust for Lisbon
In 2023, Portugal experienced a record-breaking influx of foreign tourists, primarily from Spain, Britain and the US, with numbers rising by 19% compared to the previous year and 11% compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019. In March 2024, Lisbon clinched the title of Europe’s Best Destination for MICE (no, not the furry kind – Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) for the first time, alongside being awarded Europe’s Best Urban Destination in 2024. The city has seen a spike in the number of expats, including digital nomads. By the end of 2023, the number of foreign citizens holding residence permits in Lisbon reached 118,947, representing diverse nationalities like Brazil, Italy, France and Nepal, constituting 21% of the city’s population.
Source: Expat Insider 2023: Lisbon: A Place to Build a Home, but Not a Career | InterNations
Challenges amidst growth
While the surge in international tourism has brought economic benefits and revitalised parts of Lisbon, it has also triggered concerns around gentrification and overtourism. At the same time, the influx of newcomers is creating a new urban culture, often at odds with the notion of “authenticity”, which overseas visitors are eager to find.
This has prompted the local government to implement regulations and initiatives to promote sustainability. The increasing flow of tourists, expats and digital nomads means that policymakers must strike a careful balance between meeting the needs of locals and newcomers, in terms of housing, taxation, and cultural offerings.
Gentrification can displace long-time residents from newly popular central locations to the suburbs, while standardisation arising from global commerce can jeopardise the distinctiveness of local culture that visitors are eager to encounter. On the other hand, innovative business can emerge to blend with a rich history, shaping Lisbon’s vibrant new contemporary cultural landscape.
Fresh interpretations and new narratives are being added to Lisbon’s cultural patterns, enriching its human and physical landscape.
Enhancing cultural authenticity: The essential role of museums in preserving identity
Museums, like other cultural entities trusted with preserving local heritage and creativity, can play a pivotal role in this picture through the ongoing research, preservation and reinterpretation of history and local memory. Institutions like the Museum of Lisbon aim to ignite curiosity about the city and lead a path towards a broader knowledge-based understanding of identity, values, culture and history, rather than superficial stereotypes, artificial traditions and false tales.
Beyond their core mission of preserving heritage and conducting research, the Museum of Lisbon actively pursues many activities to engage a broader audience beyond the typical demographic of young visitors. This helps the museum promote sustainability, inclusion, and well-being, practices emphasised in a recent OECD report. It aims to foster a sense of belonging among diverse audiences, including those traditionally overlooked in cultural experiences, such as visitors with disabilities, adults with dementia, and recent immigrants.
The Museum’s programmes, inside the museum and out in the streets, are rooted in a focus on local history, identity, and values and aim to strengthen the connection between the city’s heritage and its contemporary urban life. Harmonising the past and the near future is key to prevent glossing over tradition, or undermining progress. Instead, it is crucial to weave together the threads of time, space and collective memory to raise awareness of who we are and what differentiates Lisbon from elsewhere, which leads to the tourists’ top goals.
The long-term and temporary exhibitions at the four museum sites that comprise the Museum of Lisbon have been tackling themes which unveil traditional and new stories around the collections that span from pre-history to contemporary times. Alongside projects about tiles, archaeology and arts, there have been barrier-breaker projects focused on urban planning, ideas for the future of the city, the hidden memory of the slave trade, and the urban vegetable gardens in the past and the present towards a more sustainable city.
Exhibitions, walking tours across the city, publications and engaging programmes work together as ways of dealing with the rapid change of the city landscape and foster critical thinking.
Sustainability programmes draw upon ongoing research collaborations with community partners, other museums and university centres and underpin ongoing events for families and adults inside the museum, in the gardens and out in the city, like “Biodiversity in the city” and “An Insect Hotel”.
An inclusive approach
Long-term inclusive programmes include one aimed at newborn babies and their parents, a partnership with a children’s physiotherapist that creates relaxing moments of reconnection with the city’s cultural values. Participants welcome underrepresented groups like families needing social care and recent newcomers to the city.
Every year, a new theatre play about a moment in Lisbon’s history is written and rehearsed by a group of mentally disabled actors together with the museum team. They feel empowered by performing in front of an audience and for school groups.
“Stories in the City” is an experimental place-making co-creation project designed by the Museum of Lisbon alongside a national charity for social integration. It aims at young recent immigrants under a social protection programme who came from diverse cultural backgrounds, helping them to build stronger links with the city landscape, values, and history.
Fostering memories and empathy about the city is also among the goals of the programme “Spot the Place – Meetings at the Museum” for people with dementia and their caregivers. It was developed together with the Alzheimer Portugal Foundation and experts in neurosciences and inclusion. Participants have shown higher levels of well-being and self-confidence during their time at the museum.
Bringing communities together
At the end of the day, whether engaging in entertainment programmes or historical tours, we find that new arrivals – whether temporary or permanent – are eager to learn and experience the distinctiveness of the city and its people, and understand how it has evolved over centuries. They value authentic stories about fellow human beings, exploring captivating disparities and unexpected similarities.
Museums cannot solve all the problems, but they can bring communities together, provide a common understanding of a city’s identity, and help preserve authentic narratives and values.
Joana Sousa Monteiro
Joana Sousa Monteiro has been director of the Museum of Lisbon since 2015. She was a museum adviser to the Lisbon Councillor for Culture (2010-2014) for the reprogramming of the local museums model. She was Assistant Coordinator of the Portuguese Museums Network, which established a new accreditation system for museums under the National Institute of Museums (2000-2010). Previously, she worked at the Institute of Contemporary Art (1997-2000) and the National Museum of Contemporary Art (1994) in the making of learning programmes and exhibitions. She holds a degree in Art History, an MA in Museology, and an MA in Arts Management, and has been a museum management teacher at NOVA University since 2013. Prior to being Co-Chair of the Strategic Plan Committee of ICOM (the International Council of Museums), she was a member of the Portuguese ICOM National Committee Board (2014-2016) and Chair of ICOM – CAMOC, the International Committee for the Collections and Activities of the Museums of Cities (2016-2022).