Best-of list · Europe Guide
The most underrated European bar cities our editors keep returning to. Budapest, Porto, Edinburgh and four more cities the travel press has not.
The short answer
8 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
The problem with travel press coverage of underrated European bar cities is that the moment a city gets labelled underrated, it stops being underrated. Barcelona was underrated in 1998. Lisbon was underrated in 2012. Today they are two of the most visited cities in Europe. What we are looking for here are cities that remain under-covered relative to their actual quality, in 2024, right now. We found seven. Some of them you will recognise. One or two you might not.
Porto has been called underrated for ten years. The difference now is that it has actually developed the bar infrastructure to justify the praise. The Ribeira waterfront and Miguel Bombarda gallery district have produced 30 genuinely excellent bars within a 15-minute walk of each other. Unlike Lisbon, the city has not yet smoothed out its rough edges, which is precisely what makes it worth visiting before it does.