Student housing in Campolide, Lisbon

What it's like to live here.

Campolide sits in the bowl just below Sete Rios and behind the Amoreiras shopping centre, climbing up the hillside towards the aqueduct. It's the parish that NOVA students have called home for two decades — the original NOVA SBE Campolide campus is here, and even though the main business school moved to Carcavelos in 2018, Campolide still hosts NOVA's other faculties (Information Management, Statistics, parts of the Rectorate) and a steady stream of seminars and exam halls. Cidade Universitária is two stops up the blue line from Praça de Espanha (the parish's metro anchor); FCSH NOVA on Avenida de Berna is a fifteen-minute walk through the back of Sete Rios.

The streets are hilly, narrow, and a bit rougher around the edges than the parishes north of here — that's most of the appeal for the students who live here. Rents are lower, the cafés are cheaper and slower, and you walk to class in fifteen minutes instead of paying for a metro pass you barely use. Aqueduto das Águas Livres towers over the parish — its viewing point at Mãe d'Água is one of the best secret panoramic spots in Lisbon.

Daily life: Pingo Doce on Rua Marquês de Fronteira, Lidl up by Sete Rios, the Mercado de Campolide for produce. For coffee and the standard student loop: Tasca da Esquina nearby for proper lunch, the cafés around Rua de Campolide for a quick bica, and Amoreiras Plaza's food court when you want chains and Wi-Fi. The Jardim Amália Rodrigues is at the parish edge — a long lawn and pond walk that runs into Parque Eduardo VII.

Praça de Espanha (blue line) gets you to Baixa-Chiado in twelve minutes. Rents sit at the lower-middle of our band — figure €400 to €600 per room — with the flats nearest the NOVA campus at the top of that range.

Best fit: NOVA students at any of the Lisbon-side faculties, anyone happy with hills in exchange for a five-minute walk to class.