Known to everyone as the Pink Street for the bright pink paint covering its cobbles, Rua Nova do Carvalho was a rough sailors' red-light strip until a clean-up turned it into the centre of Cais do Sodré's nightlife. Bars, clubs, and a few surviving old haunts like Pensão Amor and the Music Box line both sides, and on weekend nights the street fills with a young crowd drinking under strings of umbrellas hung overhead.
By day it is quiet and faintly seedy, worth a quick look for the colour and the photographs. The transformation is not universally loved — some locals find it sanitised — but it is now an unavoidable stop on any Lisbon night out, and the area's grittier edges are never far away.