Four Seasons
Four Seasons Ritz Lisbon
The case for the Ritz Lisbon is almost entirely about the people running it, not the rooms themselves. Doormen and housekeeping who greet you like they mean it, a concierge team that produces Benfica tickets on request, service that reads as natural rather than rehearsed: guest after guest, months apart, describes the same thing. The bar keeps getting singled out as one of the better rooms in the city to sit in, the buffet breakfast is called out as genuinely excellent rather than just good for a hotel, and the pool and sauna setup (one traveller compared it to a proper Greek bath) is a real amenity rather than a box-tick. The rooms are where the story splits. Several recent stays flag stained carpets and thermostats that need constant resetting, and one guest priced the room itself closer to £200-300 a night on its own physical merits, separate from the name and the service. There's also a renovation-noise complaint from a weekday stay in late 2025 that the guest felt should have been disclosed at booking. The gap is between public spaces that land as genuinely grand and individual rooms that can feel tired depending on which one you draw, and it's worth asking about your specific room and dates before you commit. Location is the other trade-off: 15-20 minutes above Chiado and Alfama, fine if you want scale, views over Parque Eduardo VII, and a proper old-world base, less fine if you want to fall out of the hotel into the old city. If you want cutting-edge design, there are newer, more central options in Lisbon; if you want staff who actually follow through and public rooms with real gravitas, this still delivers on the strength of its people.
