Bairro Alto is an area of central Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

, Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

.

The first terrain division occurred around 1500, when the court of D.Manuel I

Manuel I of Portugal

Manuel I , the Fortunate , 14th king of Portugal and the Algarves was the son of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu, , by his wife, Infanta Beatrice of Portugal...

 moved from the castle to the royal palace in Terreiro do Paço. The need for housing led the king to force farmers to resign their lands.
Nowadays, it functions as a residential, shopping and entertainment district. Bairro Alto is one of the oldest districts in Lisbon. Dozens of fado

Fado

Fado is a music genre which can be traced to the 1820s in Portugal, but probably with much earlier origins. Fado historian and scholar, Rui Vieira Nery, states that "the only reliable information on the history of Fado was orally transmitted and goes back to the 1820s and 1830s at best...

 singing clubs animate the area. All major Portuguese newspapers once had their offices in here. Prostitution was visible and considerable.

Since the 1990s, Bairro Alto went through major changes. Lisbon's city council made extensive repairs, and dozens of new restaurants, clubs and trendy shops were opened. Many young people moved into the area. Cars were banned (except for residents and emergency vehicles). Today, Bairro Alto (or just Bairro) is the heart of Lisbon's youth culture and nightlife. Lisbon's punk

Punk subculture

The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...

, gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

, heavy metal music

Heavy metal music

Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...

, goth

Gothic rock

Gothic rock is a musical subgenre of post-punk and alternative rock that formed during the late 1970s. Gothic rock bands grew from the strong ties they had to the English punk rock and emerging post-punk scenes...

, hip hop

Hip hop music

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

 and reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

 scenes all have the Bairro as their home, due to the number of clubs and bars dedicated to each of them. During daytime, the Bairro is a traditional district where older people shop for groceries, and the younger generations visit art galleries like Zé dos Bois, bookshops like Ler Devagar or arty gift shops like Hold Me.

Violent crime is not unusual in the area. Despite of PSP

Polícia de Segurança Pública

The Polícia de Segurança Pública - PSP is the Portuguese police force that works in large urban areas. Rural towns and areas are under the protection of the Portuguese Republican National Guard...

’s best efforts to eradicate the drug traffic, illegal drugs are sold in the streets. Homicides
and destruction of police property have occurred in the past, and such type of episodes are somewhat recurrent in the night life of the Bairro.
This zone struggles with a problem of vandalism, with graffiti

Graffiti

Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

 destroying historical buildings, such as the place of death of Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa, born Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa , was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic and translator described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language.-Early years in Durban:On 13 July...

 and Almada Negreiros

Almada Negreiros

José Sobral de Almada Negreiros was a Portuguese artist. He was born in the then colony of São Tomé e Príncipe, the son of a Portuguese father, António Lobo de Almada Negreiros, and a Santomean mother, Elvira Freire Sobral...

.

Since the 1st of November 2008 all the bars in Bairro Alto are forced to close doors at 2:00 AM, due to the noise caused by the large groups of people on the streets. However, as of the 1st of August 2009, bars are allowed to be opened until 3:00 AM., a measure that also includes an increase on the number of police agents in the area. The city approved a 1,2 million EUR

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

project to improve the area appearance and security, and namely to tackle the graffiti problem.