Príncipe Real is one of Lisbon's most elegant districts — nineteenth-century buildings with high ceilings and generous rooms, which is wonderful to live in and heavy to carry.
The furniture here tends to be larger than average and the staircases, though grander than in Alfama, still turn. Some buildings have lifts added later, and those lifts are usually small. We check the stairwell and any tight turns on video, because a tall wardrobe on a curved nineteenth-century staircase is a job to plan, not to improvise.
Ceilings of three metres and rooms built for a different century mean the furniture that lives here is simply larger. Wardrobes that come apart into four pieces rather than two, dining tables that seat ten, mirrors nobody wants to be the one carrying.
Many buildings had a lift added long after they were built, usually in the stairwell void. Those lifts are narrow by definition — they fit two people and a suitcase, not a chest of drawers. So the pattern here is the opposite of what people expect: boxes go up in the lift, and almost every piece of furniture goes up the stairs.
The staircases are grand, and they curve. A curve is harder than a tight corner for a long item, because there is no single point where you can pivot. We measure the stairwell on video and, for a tall wardrobe, decide in advance whether it goes up in pieces or does not go up at all.
Slowly, on paper, before the day. This is the neighbourhood where improvisation is most expensive, because the items are heavy and frequently irreplaceable.
Everything of value is photographed individually, not just as part of a room. If a piece is genuinely valuable — an antique, art, a mirror of a certain age — tell us at the survey, because the insurance limit per item is a number worth checking before rather than after.
Parking is the ordinary Lisbon problem rather than an Alfama-scale one. The streets take a van, but the good spots are taken early, and around Praça do Príncipe Real the traffic thickens through the day. A reserved space is worth the paperwork here more often than not.
Volume and weight, more than access. The same floor area holds noticeably more than a modern flat does, and heavy pieces slow a crew down in a way that boxes never do. A third person is more often the right answer here than anywhere else in our area.
We would rather quote for three people and finish comfortably than quote for two and rush a nineteenth-century staircase with something heavy. When we propose a third, the reason will be a specific item, and we will name it.