Lisbon- a city of graffiti

While vacationing in Lisbon, I was surprised to discover the city awash with graffiti. Even certain monuments were tarnished with graffiti in comparison to the pristine pictures the guidebook showed. It was particularly strong in Barrio Alto, which is known as the heart of the city's youth culture. Yet it seemed as if the graffiti has become a large part of the ambiance, what gives the area its Bohemian feel. This was in comparison to more political graffiti found on statues in the main central parts of the city (such in the picture shown here), which was clearly meant for a tourist audience. Traveling further into the suburbs, into Cova da Moura (in Buraca, a neighborhood with people tied to the Cape Verde Islands, Angola, and Mozambique, Guinea, and Eastern Europeans), the part of Lisbon the guidebooks tell you to avoid, where taxis dont go, and of which tourist information officers have very minimal knowledge, we discovered more stylistic mural-like graffiti of figures such as Tupac, ('Tupac lives in Buraca') perhaps meant to express the solace that many marginalized youth have found in the hip hop culture.