Lisbon’s superb natural setting, spread across seven hills and hugging the banks of the wide River Tagus estuary, attracted settlers as far back as 900BC, with the arrival of the Phoenicians.

However, its zenith was reached in the 14th and 15th centuries, when its explorers set out to investigate the world’s oceans. Many of the city’s grandest buildings, such as those along the waterfront in the suburb of Bélem, are legacies of those days.

Most of the city centre Baixa area only dates back to the 18th century, though, when a large swathe of Lisbon had to be rebuilt after the devastating earthquake of 1755.

Lisbon’s famous fado music mournfully recounts the passing of the maritime golden age and such traumas as the earthquake. However, Lisboetas today have a renewed spring in their step and have come a long way, in a very short time, from the introspection and fatalism of fado.

Twenty-first century Lisbon is a vibrant, cosmopolitan and creative city that has managed to successfully marry the historic with the modern, the traditional with the cutting edge.

Lisbon is at its best on languorous summer evenings, when the pavement cafés and riverside restaurants bustle with steamy life. Even in winter, when rain sweeps in off the Atlantic, any brief snatch of sunshine brings the tables back outside, in a city where enjoying life and taking time to appreciate it is still paramount.