Giulia BlocalAs Seen on the Streets of
LISBON
An independent, self-published Lisbon street art book built from field research and the voices of the artists who shape its streets. Across 314 pages, their perspectives come together with my own explorations and Paolo Giannotti’s photography to look beyond individual artworks and into the city around them.
EBOOK not available yet
A visually rich and deeply researched guide to Lisbon’s street art, grounded in local voices and the urban context surrounding the artworks.
The Story Behind the Book
As Seen on the Streets of Lisbon began taking shape in May 2025, when I invited BLocal readers to join me on a street art trip to Lisbon, helping finance the project while turning part of that fieldwork into a shared experience. The trip also became the starting point for a much deeper phase of research, as I continued meeting and interviewing local artists, visiting studios and following the stories, neighbourhoods and changes shaping Lisbon’s street art scene. Over the following year and a half, all of that material gradually grew into a 314-page book.
INSIDE THE BOOK
As Seen on the Streets of Lisbon brings together the voices of 13 Lisbon-based street artists, each offering a personal perspective on the city through the places they know and the way they experience its streets. The book also includes shorter contributions from other artists, broadening the view beyond the main interviews and bringing additional perspectives from across the local scene.
Alongside these voices, the book combines:
- A history of Lisbon’s graffiti and street art scene, providing the context behind what can be seen on the streets today.
- My own recommendations and a detailed Google map, connecting landmark works with lesser-known street art spots across the city.
- Artwork stories, looking at the ideas and circumstances behind selected works rather than treating them as isolated images.
- Practical travel information and off-the-beaten-path suggestions, including some of the local street artists’ favourite places and opening up parts of Lisbon that go well beyond the usual street art routes.
- Paolo Giannotti’s photography, documenting both the artworks and the urban context in which they exist.
Choose your format
The hardcover and paperback contain exactly the same texts and photographs, with the difference in size and paper quality. The eBook offers the same content in a digital format that can be accessed immediately.
HARDCOVER
254 × 178 mm
ISBN 9791224342496
Large-format edition printed on high-quality paper, designed to give Paolo Giannotti’s photography more space and detail. The version to choose if you want the book primarily as an art and photography object.
PAPERBACK
A5 · 210 × 148 mm
ISBN 9791224342519
A lighter, more portable edition designed to travel with you while exploring Lisbon. It contains exactly the same texts and photographs as the hardcover in a format that is easier to carry around the city.
EBOOK
Digital Edition
The same book in digital format, available immediately without print-on-demand waiting times or international shipping. A practical option if you want to start planning your Lisbon explorations straight away.
NOT AVAILABLE YET
What they’re saying about
As Seen on the Streets of Lisbon
Since its release, As Seen on the Streets of Lisbon has received generous feedback from people working within the street art scene and from researchers who study it. Here are some of their words.
Leafing through this book is, for me, a tremendous journey through time. In it, I am able to look back on the years when I embraced my work as a producer, programme organiser and curator of urban art – the result of a long-standing passion for creation in public spaces and for its multidimensional impact on communities and territories. A passion that was born of careful and attentive observation, listening and feeling. It is a similar passion that I recognise in all of Giulia’s work.
There is a (specialised) way of seeing and feeling the place, the time and all scales, which does not rely on perfect images (with which we are excessively flooded in this field), but always on real and actual ones. She captures these and translate them to us so exemplarily through words, in such a clear and complete way, that it enables us to experience the places she invites us to visit. For all these reasons, this book is an excellent invitation to (re)discover the different interpretations and layers of history, stories and the present-day reality of our Lisbon.
This book captures something of the intangible feeling of Lisbon’s urban creativity. It translates the author’s honest and independent ground work along both historical and geographical axes. Featuring original selected quotes from some key figures alongside images of both extant and non-extant works. It serves as a valuable document for research.
This book offers a fascinating journey through the history and context of graffiti and street art in Lisbon. Immersing us in the city’s streets and introducing us to some of its most influential artists, Giulia captures the vibrancy and dynamism of this ever-evolving cultural and artistic scene. The book reveals how and why Lisbon has become one of the most significant destinations for graffiti and street art over the past few decades.
I’ve been writing graffiti for over 30 years in Lisbon and the surrounding areas, so I saw the phrase “Street Art” come to life. Street art is now very popular, and it’s great to have people like Giulia caring about its history and origins. This approach helps reach the right people—those who have been there from day one and those who helped the culture grow.
COMING SOON: reviews, interviews and press coverage →
Get your copy!
Choose the format that works best for you and start exploring Lisbon through the artists, neighbourhoods and stories that shaped this book.
About
the
series
As Seen on the Streets of… is an independent, self-published series exploring cities through street art, built from field research and the voices of the people who shape each local scene. The books move beyond individual artworks to look at the histories and urban changes around them, while local artists open up neighbourhoods and places that rarely appear in conventional city guides.
The series also keeps in view aspects of street art that are easily lost when it is reduced to a collection of murals, including its temporary nature and the tensions surrounding who controls public space. Each volume documents what is visible at a particular moment while asking what disappears, what gets preserved and how the culture changes as cities change around it.
Lisbon is the third volume in the series, following As Seen on the Streets of Paris and As Seen on the Streets of London. The journey continues with new cities, each researched independently and developed through the same combination of local voices and original photography.