Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon

Rooms and decor

Picture a high-ceilinged lobby, hand-woven rugs, crystal chandeliers, and a collection of over 200 contemporary Portuguese artworks hung along the walls — this is the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon, which has welcomed guests since 1959, built under a Portuguese government that wanted Lisbon to have a hotel on par with the Ritz Paris. The 1950s design has been carefully preserved, then nudged just enough to feel current. All 282 rooms and suites average 40 square metres, clearly bigger than the European luxury norm. Open the door and you find a sitting area set apart from the bed, a warm cream-and-brown palette dressed in silk, French-style wood furniture, and a full marble bathroom with a separate tub and shower. What makes the rooms special is the private balcony on nearly every one — step out with a morning coffee and look over Parque Eduardo VII rolling green down toward the distant Tagus. Book a high floor from the 6th up and you'll catch the old town and Castelo de São Jorge off in the distance. The mood is the classic our grandparents knew, but clean and easy on the eye like a modern hotel, with nothing tired about it.

Food and amenities

If this hotel has a beating heart, it's CURA, the one-Michelin-star restaurant under chef Pedro Pena Bastos, one of the most-watched young chefs in Portugal. He serves a contemporary Portuguese tasting menu from local produce at one big communal table in the centre of the room, open to the kitchen at work. Alongside it, Varanda looks over Parque Eduardo VII and serves both an excellent breakfast and a Sunday seafood buffet that locals book well ahead. The Almada Negreiros Bar in the lobby is a classic 1950s room for a glass of Port over live piano. Up on floor 9 you reach the Four Seasons spa, a 1,300-square-metre, Forbes Five-Star space with a naturally lit indoor pool, 8 treatment rooms including a couples room, a hammam, a Finnish sauna, and a full gym. The most talked-about feature, though, is the 350-metre rooftop running track on floor 9 — the only hotel in Lisbon with one. Loop it for a 360-degree view that frames the whole city, the Tagus, Castelo de São Jorge, and the Marquês de Pombal monument in a single sweep. Run it at dawn for the sunrise and you'll see why people rave about it.

Location and getting there

The location of the Four Seasons Ritz is about as strategic as Lisbon gets — the hotel sits on the hill of Rua Rodrigo da Fonseca at the northern top of the grand Avenida da Liberdade, right above the city's largest park, Parque Eduardo VII, so the view opens wide with nothing in the way. A few steps from the lobby is Marquês de Pombal metro (Yellow and Blue lines), which drops you into the old-town districts of Baixa and Chiado within minutes. Avenida da Liberdade itself, lined with global boutiques like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Prada, runs downhill right in front, so shoppers barely need a car. From Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS), an Uber or taxi takes about 15 to 20 minutes. You're also close to the motorway and the ramp onto the 25 de Abril bridge, which makes day trips to Sintra or Cascais easy. The one thing to know: the hotel is high on a hill, so the walk back up from the old town below is a fair climb — but that's the trade for a panorama no other hotel in the city can match.

Things to know before booking

Straight talk to help you decide. The single most common gripe is the exterior — a late-1950s modernist build that reads like a stiff office block, with none of the ornate palace charm many expect from the Ritz name. All of the magic is inside, so if you're picturing a grand Ritz Paris facade, the first look from the street may disappoint. The second issue is price: this is the most expensive hotel in Lisbon, with rooms starting around $800 a night and food and spa billed separately at high rates — it is not an all-inclusive resort. Dinner at CURA starts at a luxury per-head price, and spa treatments do too, so budget accordingly. On location, even though it's near Avenida da Liberdade, the hotel sits high on a hill, and the walk back from exploring Baixa or Chiado is a long uphill climb — call an Uber, or take the metro to Marquês de Pombal and walk the last short stretch. Lower-floor rooms facing the street may catch some traffic noise from Rua Rodrigo da Fonseca, so asking for a high floor facing the park is the safer bet.

Our take

After reading through the real reviews and comparing it against the other top-tier hotels in Lisbon, the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon is the city's highest standard, no question — rooms clearly larger than the European luxury norm, a private balcony on nearly every one with views of Parque Eduardo VII and the Tagus, and Four Seasons service that review after review praises for remembering guests' names, sweating the details, and arranging surprises on special days. Add the one-Michelin-star CURA, a Forbes Five-Star spa, and a rooftop running track unlike anything else in Lisbon, and you have the most complete package in town. If your mental image of the trip is rising early to run the rooftop with the city laid out below, soaking in a marble bathroom, shopping Avenida da Liberdade in the afternoon, then closing the day with dinner at CURA, this is the most fitting answer in Lisbon. But if you want a grand palace-style building or are hunting for easy-to-justify value, this may not be it — the exterior is plain modernist and the price sits at the very top of the city. Overall we give it 9.4/10, best for couples, honeymooners, top-tier business travelers, and anyone who wants Lisbon's highest standard with no compromise.