Vasco da Gama Tower
A 160-metre lattice tower shaped after a caravel's sail, now topped by a Michelin-starred restaurant where the observation deck used to be.
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Built for Expo '98 and named after the explorer who first charted the sea route from Europe to India in 1498, it remains Lisbon's tallest structure. In 2018 the Fifty Seconds restaurant by Martín Berasategui moved into the old panoramic deck and earned a Michelin star within its first year.
What to look for
- The caravel silhouette — architects Leonor Janeiro, Nick Jacobs, and SOM designed the base to enter the Tagus like the bow of a boat, with pillars forming an open riverside terrace.
- The lattice tower shaft itself, rising to 160 metres (520 ft) above the north bank of the river.
- Panoramic elevators that travel up through the tower structure to the restaurant level.
Fifty Seconds restaurant occupies the former viewing platform — book ahead; the five-star Myriad hotel fills the base of the tower.
Vasco da Gama Tower is one of 36 sights worth the detour in Lisbon, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Lisbon pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Lisbon
- Belém TowerThe last thing Portuguese explorers saw before the Atlantic swallowed their ships whole.
- Vasco da Gama BridgeThe EU's longest bridge opened on 29 March 1998 to mark 500 years since Vasco da Gama found the sea route to India — and at this scale, that ambition registers.
- Jerónimos MonasteryVasco da Gama prayed here the night before sailing to India — then came back to rest here forever.
- Estádio da LuzThe stadium that replaced a 120,000-seat colossus, then hosted a Euro final, two Champions League finals, and 17 million visitors — all under a name that traces to a church, not poetry.
- Estádio José AlvaladeFifty thousand seats, all dark green — two decades of deliberate repainting turned Sporting CP's home into a single-colour architectural statement.
- 25 de Abril BridgeThe bridge still wears the date the dictatorship ended.