Bairro Padre Cruz

In the Lisbon downtown, you could spot a few bell-shaped dustbins on the road transformed into brilliant works of art, but that aside, you would have to sweat to find full-facade murals on buildings. But enter Bairro Padre Cruz, the epicenter of Portugal’s startling mural corridors. And unlike Portas do Sol, you would be hard-pressed to find tourists out on the streets in Bairro Padre Cruz, as it lies on the outskirts of the city and has no value to the usual touristic crowd.
The hundreds of twenty-foot long murals painted on nearly every wall facing the sun would surely take your breath away. Then again, this neighborhood wasn’t always this pretty, but mostly contended with graffiti that spoke of the pain and suffering of the city’s poor. Padre Cruz owes its transformation to the Galeria de Arte Urbana, which organized a Muro Urban Art Festival in the area a few years back, inviting mural artists from all over the world to come in and beautify the economically-disadvantaged neighborhood. What now remains is a thing of beauty for everyone to behold.