Editorial
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.
Budapest's reputation as an underrated European bar city took a hit when stag parties discovered it in the early 2010s. The ruin bars attracted the wrong kind of attention. What has happened since then is more interesting: a generation of serious bars has emerged in the 7th and 8th districts that operates entirely independently of the bachelor party economy, serving local residents and discerning visitors who know where to look.
Edinburgh gets listed as a destination for whisky tourists and then gets overlooked by everyone else. This is a significant error. The city has 80 specialist whisky bars, yes, but it also has a cocktail scene in the New Town and Leith that would be celebrated if it existed in London or Barcelona. The prices are lower, the rooms are better, and the bartenders are hungrier than anywhere else in the UK.
Ljubljana is the answer to the question of which underrated European bar city most people are missing entirely. Slovenia's capital has a pedestrianised old town with a concentration of bars along the Ljubljanica river that rivals anything in Croatia or the Czech Republic. The prices are 40 percent lower than Vienna. The natural wine scene has been developing for five years and is now genuinely excellent. Almost nobody talks about it yet.
The common thread across Porto, Budapest, Edinburgh, and Ljubljana is that each city's bar quality has outpaced its international reputation. The press coverage lags by three to five years. By the time travel magazines arrive in force, these cities will be as expensive and as crowded as the places they currently compare favourably against. The window for discovering them on their own terms is narrowing.
Our recommendation: visit one of these cities specifically for the bar culture rather than folding it into a broader European trip. Three nights in Porto or Ljubljana dedicated to drinking well costs less than two nights in Paris or Amsterdam and delivers more bars per evening that you will remember for years rather than days.
James is barsforKings' senior editor and has been writing about bars since 2009. He has a particular interest in cities that deserve more credit than they receive and has visited Ljubljana four times in the past two years, which tells you something about his priorities.