The arches at the top of the Carmo Convent carry nothing. They spring, they curve, they meet at the crown, and then there’s sky. Everything they were built to hold came down on 1 November 1755, and nobody put it back. Look closely at the roofline and you’ll see scaffolding tucked between the bays, which is the detail that gives the game away: somebody is paying to keep this building broken.

Lisbon has become a predictable answer to the question of where to take a laptop and disappear for a month. The reasons are practical: the timezone sits at UTC+1, which means European standups are manageable and US async is workable by evening. The cost of living remains below Western European norms. The city has fiber. None of that explains why it actually works. What explains it is the rhythm. Lisbon runs on a schedule that tolerates long midday pauses without apologizing for them.