STREET ART · AROUND THE WORLD
Find the wall. Book the walk.
Mural walks in Lisbon, graffiti routes in Berlin, the backstreets of Shoreditch and the open-air galleries of Buenos Aires. Real reviews of the street-art tours worth booking, led by guides who actually know the artists.
Worth the trip for the walls alone
Three cities painting the best work in the world.
Every big city has a few murals. Berlin, Lisbon and Buenos Aires are different: whole districts given over to the artists, walls that change month to month, scenes the rest of the world flies in to see.
Germany
Berlin
No city paints harder. The Wall came down and the whole place became a canvas: Kreuzberg facades five storeys tall, the courtyards of Friedrichshain, the legal halls where crews work in daylight and the East Side Gallery still pulling crowds. A local untangles the rivalries and the layers, the buff and the comeback, so a wall you would have walked past becomes the story of the city.
- 1 Berlin: City Street Art Guided Walking Tour
- 2 Berlin: 3-Hour Street Art Tour
- 3 Berlin Street Art Walking Tour – Off The Grid
Portugal
Lisbon
Lisbon turned a city of empty buildings into Europe’s biggest open-air gallery, and it did it on purpose. The council commissions the giants you see down the hills, from the chiselled faces of Vhils to the tiled walls of Add Fuel, while the abandoned LX Factory and the back lanes of Mouraria fill in around them. A guided walk climbs the seven hills with you and points out what the tram crowds never see.
- 1 Lisbon: Street Art Tour
- 2 Lisbon: Kickstart Street Art Walking Tour
- 3 Lisbon: Banksy Museum Permanent Exhibition Entry Ticket
Argentina
Buenos Aires
With almost no anti-graffiti law, Buenos Aires lets artists paint whole buildings with the owner’s nod and nothing else, so the walls run wild and huge. Palermo and Colegiales are open-air murals block after block, the colour louder and the styles freer than almost anywhere. A guide takes you to the pieces with a story and the studios behind them.
- 1 Palermo: Graffiti and Street Art Guided Tour in English
- 2 Private Off the Beaten Path: Hidden Urban Art Bike Tour
- 3 Premium Argentinian Wine and Malbec Tasting & Urban Art Tour
If you only book one
The walk more travellers rave about than any other.
Out of every street-art tour on the site, this is the one that sends people home telling everyone they know to take it.
The crowd-pleasers
The Most Popular Street Art Tours Right Now
Lisbon mural walks, Berlin graffiti routes, Shoreditch backstreets, the legal halls and the gallery shows. The bookings travellers are happiest they made.
Start with a city
The best street art tours, city by city.
Lisbon for the giants down the hills, Berlin for the Wall and the backyards, London for Shoreditch. Pick the city you are headed to and we will show you the walks worth booking there.
Where the walls are
Three corners of the map worth painting.
If the city is still open, start with the kind of scene you want to walk into. Each of these is a region the site covers deeply, and a very different wall waiting at the end of it.
Berlin
The whole city is the canvas.
Nowhere paints like Berlin. Kreuzberg facades climb five storeys, the courtyards of Friedrichshain hide pieces you would never find alone, and the legal halls let crews work in daylight. A guide reads the layers for you: who painted over whom, which wall belongs to which crew, and why the giant astronaut still stops traffic.
See the best Berlin street art tours →London
Shoreditch repaints itself every week.
No two London walks see the same walls. Brick Lane and the Shoreditch backstreets turn over so fast that a piece you photograph today may be gone by the weekend, painted by everyone from Stik and Bambi to whoever climbed up last night. A guide knows what is fresh, what is famous, and the alleys the day crowd never turns into.
See the best London street art tours →Lisbon
A whole city turned into a gallery, on purpose.
Lisbon commissions its giants: the chiselled portraits Vhils blasts straight into the plaster, the blue-tile patterns of Add Fuel, the towering walls of the LX Factory. Climb the seven hills with a guide and the murals come at you one after another, from the council-backed masterpieces to the raw scrawl of the Mouraria back lanes the tram crowds roll straight past.
See the best Lisbon street art tours →Athens
The walls that argue back.
Athens paints with something to say. The crisis turned Exarcheia and Psyri into the most charged walls in the Mediterranean, equal parts art and protest, stencils and slogans layered over giant murals. A local walks you through what the pieces actually mean, the politics behind them and the artists who keep the spray cans loaded.
- 1 Athens Street Art Walk
- 2 Athens: Guided Street Art Walking Tour
- 3 Awesome Street Art Tour in Athens with a Local Expert Small-Group
By approach
How close do you want to get to the wall?
A Lisbon highlights walk past the big names. A Berlin deep dive into the backyards and the layers. A London workshop where an artist puts a can in your hand. Pick the kind of afternoon you are after.
First look
Lisbon, the highlights walk.The big-name murals you came to photograph, on foot through Graca and the Mouraria, with a guide who can tell a Vhils carving from an Add Fuel tile. Everything famous, nothing you need to know the scene to enjoy.
Go deeper
Berlin, into the backyards.Off the Kreuzberg main drag and into the courtyards, the legal halls and the rooftops, where a local reads the layers for you: who painted over whom, which crew owns which wall, and why it changed last week.
Hands on
London, a can in your hand.A Shoreditch walk that ends at a legal wall with a workshop, where an artist hands you the cans and teaches you to fade, fill and tag. You leave having actually painted, not just photographed.
Barcelona
The art is on the shutters.
Barcelona’s best work hides until the shops close. Roll-down shutters across El Raval and Poblenou become a gallery after dark, the old factory walls of the 22@ district carry full murals, and the Moco museum puts the Banksys and Basquiats indoors a block away. A guide who knows the scene walks you to the pieces with a story and the artists behind them, the ones the Gothic Quarter crowds stroll straight past.
See all 18 Barcelona street art tours →By city
Pick a city and start walking.
Lisbon for the giants down the hills. Berlin for the Wall and the backyards. London for Shoreditch. Barcelona for the shutters. Paris for Belleville. Athens for the walls that argue back.
More cities
More walls worth a weekend.
Naples for the Quartieri Spagnoli, Madrid for Lavapies, Amsterdam for the NDSM yards, Wynwood in Miami, Hosier Lane in Melbourne. The rest of the map, ready when you are.
Three cities, three scenes
Pick a city, plan the afternoon around the walls.
Shrine-lined alleys in Naples, walls of protest in Mexico City, repainted laneways in Melbourne. Three cities, three completely different ways the paint goes up.
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