Updated 2:47 p.m. ET Sept. 4

MILAN — Italy’s fashion king is dead.

Giorgio Armani, an icon of the late 20th century and a pioneer of the celebrity-fashion juggernaut, has died in Milan. Often referred to as the “King” or “the Maestro,” he was born in Piacenza, Italy, on July 11, 1934.

 “In this company, we have always felt like part of a family,” his employees and his family stated on Thursday. “Today, with deep emotion, we feel the void left by the one who founded and nurtured this family with vision, passion and dedication. But it is precisely in his spirit that we, the employees and the family members who have always worked alongside Mr. Armani, commit to protecting what he built and to carrying his company forward in his memory, with respect, responsibility and love.”

The funeral chamber will be set up Saturday and Sunday at Via Bergognone 59, inside the Armani/Teatro, and will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. In accordance with Armani’s explicit wishes, the funeral will be held privately.

“Il Signor Armani, as he was always respectfully and admiringly called by employees and collaborators, passed away peacefully, surrounded by his loved ones,” the statement continued. “Indefatigable to the end, he worked until his final days, dedicating himself to the company, the collections and the many ongoing and future projects,” which is not at all surprising given his tireless and hands-on approach to work. In 2019, ahead of receiving WWD’s John B. Fairchild Honor, Armani candidly described himself as a “control freak” and tales of his meticulous attention to detail are legendary.

The statement highlighted how the designer throughout his life “crafted a vision that expanded from fashion to every aspect of life, anticipating the times with extraordinary clarity and pragmatism. He has been driven by relentless curiosity and a deep attention to the present and to people. Along this journey, he established an open dialogue with the public, becoming a beloved and respected figure for his ability to connect with everyone. Always mindful of the needs of the community, he has been active on many fronts, especially in support of his beloved Milan.”

Indeed, Armani was as much a part of the character of Italy as la bella figura and la dolce vita and the reaction to his death on Thursday shot through the day, causing national television to interrupt its regular broadcast. The Milan municipality has declared that Monday will be a day of city mourning.

He was known to pose for selfies and talk to people who would approach him in his stores or during public events. In 2023, staging his One Night Only event in Venice, Armani was visibly emotional. “It’s difficult to hold back the tears, when you see young and old people of all different walks of life come up to me, asking for a photograph, and equally moved…and this repays me of all the efforts I have put into my job,” he said back then, adding that he attributed his “authenticity, honesty and frankness” to this outpouring of affection, elements that “bring up hidden feelings” in people.

Armani’s light blue eyes could be piercing and steely if something was not to his liking — and, being a perfectionist, many things initially were not — but they would then suddenly turn soft and even a bit mischievous, reflecting a keen sense of humor.

Adding further poignancy to his death Thursday is the fact that Armani, who held the role of chairman, chief executive officer and creative designer, will not be able to mark his namesake company’s 50th anniversary as planned. A fashion show and party were scheduled to take place in Milan on Sept. 28 and the company had been planning the event for months.

Armani also was mounting an exhibition retracing five decades in fashion through 150 archival looks at the Pinacoteca di Brera Museum. This would be the first time the cultural institution would host a fashion exhibition. Expected to open on Sept. 24, the exhibit should be flanked by a broader digital project called Armani/Archivio, a platform that was launched last week during the Venice Film Festival filled with a catalogue of all Giorgio Armani collections to date.

Armani’s spring 2026 womenswear collection was slated to be unveiled on Sept. 28 with a runway display to be exceptionally held in the storied courtyard of honor of Palazzo Brera, the 17th-century landmark home to the Pinacoteca, the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense library and the Brera Academy.

This year marked several milestones for Armani, who also marked the 20th anniversary of his Privé haute couture collection by mounting an exhibition at the Armani/Silos space in Milan retracing his journey in couture since 2005.

Opened in May and titled “Giorgio Armani Privé 2005-2025,” the exhibit runs through the end of the year.

Still, even as preparations for his big celebration have been taking place, it was clear from this summer that the Italian designer was in poor health. He skipped his Giorgio and Emporio Armani men’s spring 2026 shows in Milan in June as he was “recovering at home” from an illness. In his place, Leo Dell’Orco, head of menswear design, took the final bow at the shows — the first time ever Armani did not do so. Armani also did not attend the Privé haute couture show for fall 2025 a few weeks later in Paris either.

Dell’Orco is part of the tight-knit circle of friends and collaborators Armani called family. The designer’s closest relatives include his nephew Andrea Camerana, the son of Armani’s sister Rosanna, who also works in the company, and Roberta Armani, who is the daughter of the designer’s late brother, Sergio, and who has been in charge of the group’s relations with high-profile celebrities for years, often acting as Armani’s deputy on social occasions around the world as the face of the company. Her sister Silvana is part of the design team.

While the future of Armani’s company has sparked speculation for years, the statement issued on Thursday pointed to continuity. The company was built over five decades “with emotion and patience. Giorgio Armani always made independence — of thought and action — his hallmark. The company is, now and always, a reflection of this spirit. His family and employees will carry the group forward in respect and continuity of these values.”

The designer revealed details about the future of his company for the first time in 2016, confirming he had established the long-rumored Giorgio Armani Foundation, which, while aiming to fund social projects, also ensured that his fashion group would live on.

“I decided to create the Giorgio Armani Foundation in order to implement projects of public and social interest,” Armani said at the time. “The foundation will also safeguard the governance assets of the Armani Group and ensure that these assets are kept stable over time, in respect of and consistent with some principles that are particularly important to me and that have always inspired my activities as a designer and an entrepreneur.

“These founding principles are based upon: autonomy and independence, an ethical approach to management with integrity and honesty, attention to innovation and excellence, an absolute priority to the continuous development of the Armani brand sustained by appropriate investments, prudent and balanced financial management, limited recourse to debt and a careful approach to acquisitions,” he added.

While vocal over the years about his aversion to sell, take on a business partner or publicly list the company, rumors about Armani contemplating forming a foundation first emerged in 2012. The foundation reflected a key priority for Armani — independence, which he sought to maintain over the years, especially since 2000 when rumors about a possible sale to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton or the-then Gucci Group and L’Oréal swirled around the fashion house.

The speculation was only natural since Armani has been a major fashion force since the ’70s. In short — like Gabrielle Chanel, Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent — Armani literally changed the way people dressed and lived. And unlike the others, that revolution touched almost everything, from T-shirts and jeans to gowns; fragrances to hotels; suits to candles. He created a behemoth group that closed 2024 with net revenues of 2.3 billion euros.

Giorgio Armani Parfums and Cosmetics, under license to L’Oréal, ranks as one of the biggest designer beauty franchises in the world. The French beauty giant since 1988 has developed Armani’s fragrances, skin care and makeup in close collaboration with the Italian designer and in March 2018, it and the designer agreed to renew their beauty license until 2050. 

Armani continued to think long term until the end.

“During 2024, while well aware of the market slowdown already evident in the second half of 2023 and of the many challenges arising from the international context, I continued to operate with an eye to the future,” he said in July, commenting on his company’s year-end performance. “It is with this in mind that I chose in any case to invest in projects of great symbolic and practical significance, which are fundamental to the future of the company,” channeling 332 million euros, almost double the 168.5 million euros channeled in 2023, and almost three times the average yearly investments in the previous years, into new projects. These included the building on Madison Avenue in New York, Palazzo Armani, the prestigious headquarters in Paris on Rue François 1er and the renovation of the mega Emporio Armani store in Milan.

Consistency and cohesion were keywords in Armani’s vocabulary throughout his five decades as a designer. However, he resisted — and resented — the notion that he could be described as merely rigorous or minimalist and he disliked being associated with the color “greige,” even staging the “Eccentrico” exhibit in 2012 to show his more eccentric side.

For a WWD Weekend cover story on interior design two years ago, the interview was held in Armani’s Milan apartment — obviously exquisitely, but also surprisingly, furnished. Case in point: a beautifully restored armchair was newly upholstered with a leopard print fabric — not exactly a pattern that one immediately associated with Armani. The apartment was originally designed by Peter Marino, but Armani had filled it with memorabilia “of personal, more than material value.” For example, a sweet portrait with his mother took pride of place, visible from the entrance into the room. Above it was a painting of a black panther and an artistic sculpture of a gorilla was also an unexpected feature. 

While staying true to his own vision and strategy throughout his life, Armani also took bold decisions to ensure the long-term success of his company. After building a diversified portfolio of brands, in 2017 the designer unveiled a new brand strategy for the Milan-based group, revealing his decision to cease the Armani Collezioni and Armani Jeans brands and use only the Giorgio Armani, Emporio Armani and A|X Armani Exchange monikers, effective with the spring 2018 season, adapting to the increasingly changing and competitive market. He launched his couture line, Armani Privé, in 2005, generally shown in Paris.

In 2020, as COVID-19 was ravaging the world, Armani penned an open letter to WWD reflecting on the absurdity of the state of fashion back then, “with the overproduction of garments and a criminal nonalignment between the weather and the commercial season,” asking for a “courageous and necessary” shift.

In 2021, due to the worsening of the pandemic, he made a courageous and trailblazing decision to cancel both his Giorgio and Emporio men’s fall 2022 shows slated to be held in Milan, holding them behind closed doors, as well as his Privé show in Paris in January the following year. The designer generously made donations up to 2 million euros to Italy’s Civil Protection and a range of Italian hospitals and institutions in the country, and converted his manufacturing sites to produce single-use smocks for the protection of health care providers. He took a full-page ad in more than 60 newspapers in Italy, writing a letter to all of the health care providers strenuously fighting the coronavirus outbreak and musing on his own desire as a young man to become a doctor.

From the beginning, Armani singlemindedly and sure-handedly championed a modern wardrobe based on an unstuffy and uncontrived aesthetic that earned him a wide and loyal customer base, from the corporate world through to Hollywood A-listers and artists including Sophia Loren, Robert De Niro, Cate Blanchett, Tom Cruise, Glenn Close, George Clooney, Tina Turner and Jodie Foster, to name a few.

Even though he had started his brand years before, Armani really rocketed to international fame in 1980 by dressing Richard Gere for the title role in “American Gigolo” and he went on to become one of the first go-to designers for stars attending the Oscars.

The energetic and overachieving designer, and hands-on manager of his company, built his name into one with a value that ranks among Coca-Cola and Microsoft in Interbrand’s annual listings. “Only I know what I want and my message has to be consistent from beginning to end,” he told WWD in 2005.

Yet Armani spurned the overtures of deep-pocketed investors that clamored for his company during the luxury sector’s acquisition spree in the late ’90s. He preferred to be his own boss and learned to be a shrewd businessman, especially after the 1985 death of his companion and business partner Sergio Galeotti.

“It came as a surprise to me that Giorgio was such a strong businessman in addition to being a talented designer,” said Nino Cerruti, in a 2005 interview celebrating Armani’s 30th anniversary.

Forever clad in jeans and a fitted blue T-shirt to show off his taut, gym-toned physique, Armani worked for Cerruti in the early stages of his career, researching fabrics and trends and designing ties and shirts. Once he set out on his own, Armani expanded his company with the tenacity and meticulousness that characterized his career from Day One.

Armani’s mother Maria played a great role in his life and influenced his sense of fashion to the point that his two yachts bore her nicknames, Mariu and Maìn. She died in 2001. “She was never a particularly gushy or emotional person; she was quite reserved. She just said, ‘Bello’ when she saw the first collections,” Armani said of his mother. His father, papà Ugo, a shipping manager who worked hard to support his family, died in the early ’60s.

In 1950, Armani moved to Milan, a place he remembers thinking of as a big, scary city, to study medicine, but he threw in the towel after two years to become an assistant buyer for La Rinascente, Milan’s top department store, where he started creating eye-catching store windows. His first hands-on fashion design experience came between 1964 and 1970, when he landed a job at Hitman, Nino Cerruti’s men’s clothing line. In 1972, Armani and Galeotti opened a studio on Corso Venezia. To furnish the two modest rooms, they used the money they made by selling a car.

After designing his first collection in 1974, Armani and Galeotti founded Giorgio Armani SpA in 1975, forging a formidable team and creating their own label of men and women’s ready-to-wear.

While Armani suffered emotionally from Galeotti’s premature death, his business acumen and focus hardly faltered as the company gained momentum in the ’80s thanks in large part to the lucrative licenses he signed with the now-defunct storied Italian manufacturer Gruppo Finanziario Tessile.

This new undertaking, which soon evolved into an inspirational new business paradigm for other firms, launched Armani Le Collezioni and Emporio Armani. Armani was also among the first to understand the importance of licensing details in such key categories as his booming beauty and fragrance division, and forged a formidable partnership with L’Oréal.

He unveiled his first Giorgio Armani women’s fragrance in 1982 and today boasts a dizzying 40-plus scents between men and women for the various lines. He also has a bestselling color cosmetics and skin care line. “I’m very involved in every activity of my business, including the fragrance and cosmetics projects. I love the challenge of creating [something] new. It is never that easy, but always rewarding in the end,” was Armani’s mantra when creating a new product.

Meticulous, frugal and involved in all aspects of the business, Armani put his stamp of approval on everything from skirt lengths and the flowers strewn around at gala dinners to the colors of the curtains in the offices. Whenever he made an appearance on a photo set or at an event, you could hear his nervous staff murmuring “Sta arrivando,” referring to Armani’s imminent arrival. And the air instantly filled with tension.

His passion for sports – and basketball in particular –  translated into ongoing partnerships  with the Italian Olympic and Paralympic teams, dressing them for several Olympic and Paralympic Games through his EA7 Emporio Armani line. The brand is also the technical outfitter for Italy’s winter sports athletes, a partnership extending to the 2026 Winter Games. In addition, Armani owns the Olimpia Milano basketball team, which has been sponsored by the EA7 Emporio Armani line. Last month, the Milan-based fashion powerhouse announced that it has designed the formal wardrobe for Juventus, one of Italy’s historic and most endeared soccer clubs.

The partnership includes a selection of Giorgio Armani suits created to accompany the men’s first-team players on all official off-pitch occasions throughout the 2025-26 and 2026-27 soccer seasons.
Armani has been infusing his sartorial fair into the global soccer arena since 1994, starting with the World Cup and later created the uniforms for the Italian national soccer team for the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.
Over the decades, the company has also designed the official uniforms for the English national team, Newcastle United, Chelsea and Bayern Munich soccer teams. In 2021, Giorgio Armani debuted Emporio Armani off-field uniforms for Italy’s national soccer team, as part of the company’s four-year deal with the Italian Soccer Federation.

A workaholic, Armani would occasionally indulge in la dolce vita: sailing on his Maìn yacht, entertaining at his holiday home on the Mediterranean island of Pantelleria, dining with family at Nobu inside his Milan Via Manzoni Emporio Armani megastore or spending a quiet night at home watching one of his favorite films, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious.” He launched his home and interior design line Casa in 2000, and counted beautiful houses in Antigua; Saint Moritz; Tuscany’s beach resort Forte dei Marmi; Saint-Tropez, and Broni, near his hometown of Piacenza.

But he always worked tirelessly and passionately — admitting in his later years that he had sacrificed his own personal life for the company — and was only once forced to publicly explain he was recovering from an illness. That was in 2009, when he said he had suffered a case of hepatitis.

Whatever the event, Armani was bound to be there early, checking that everything was shipshape, which made it a dream for a reporter eager to carve out some alone time before the rush of visitors and well-wishers.

Just as his fellow fashion greats Saint Laurent, Valentino, Cristobal Balenciaga, Chanel and Dior did, Armani struck a new fashion chord when he launched his signature label. In fact, the Maestro paved the way for Italian ready-to-wear and the Made in Italy brands when he showed his first menswear collection in 1974. His womenswear collection, introduced in 1975, quickly became known for easy shapes and masculine cuts with feminine qualities. Since uptight styles and ornate detailing weren’t up his alley, Armani pursued a less-is-more template of deconstructed suits, fashioned in fluid fabrics such as viscose and wool crepes.

While he sometimes dared shots of strong color like orange and fuchsia, the word “greige” was devised to describe his color palette of muted shades of grays, taupes and beiges. His fashions came at a time when women were climbing the rungs of the corporate ladder and needed to dress accordingly. But instead of overwrought banker’s pinstripes, Armani did it his way, delivering formality in a softer and more feminine manner. He said he wanted women “to wear jackets like men without losing anything of their feminine allure.”

In more recent years, fleeting trends and other fashion antics sometimes sidetracked Armani, especially on the runway, where aviator hats or tricky pants — from bloomers to loose, low-crotch styles — won him barbs from critics. When he tried to blaze new trails, the designer felt haunted by the damned-if-you-don’t, damned-if-you-do syndrome. Once, in the early ’90s, he showed pouf silhouettes that raised eyebrows. “I loved them, but people said, ‘Well, it’s pretty, but it’s not Armani,’” he said at the time. “It’s difficult to convince these people that, even if it’s not Armani, it must be done.”

But when Armani had something to say, he didn’t hold back. Self-assured and temperamental, he never refrained from slamming his colleagues, who in his eyes generated more dash than cash. He often took the gloves off with the press, developing a love-hate relationship. On the one hand, he used the media to broadcast his new projects or vent his frustrations with the industry and designers that he accused of turning fashion into a circus. On the other, he criticized the press for dedicating too many pages to unwearable designs.

“There was always that desire to shock by showing a bare behind — a cheap trick that will only make people speak badly about fashion. I’m sure it will make a lot of magazine covers, but where is the fashion in it?” he once asked.

He could be supportive of other designers, however. In 2013, Armani decided to start helping young designers, making his theater on Via Bergognone available to the likes of Andrea Pompilio, Stella Jean and Ricostru, Julian Zigerli, Au Jour le Jour’s Diego Marquez and Mirko Fontana, Christian Pellizzari, Angelos Bratis and Edmund Ooi providing them with added visibility and a sprawling show space. 

And while Armani took pride in making clothes that sold and left nudity and vulgarity to others, he was nevertheless one of the most recognizable faces in the industry. “I’m only just now getting used to being called king, but if someone wants to call me an emperor, that’s fine by me,” he joked in 2004.

In general, he thoroughly enjoyed the attention when he mingled with his customers and fans, to the point that, when he opened the Armani Privé lounge in Milan, he was known to swing by for drinks and chat up patrons.

Indeed, Armani’s hospitality projects were almost as groundbreaking as his fashions. He was among the first designers — along with Ralph Lauren — to break into restaurants, furniture and interiors as well as apparel. Armani took it a step farther, however, linking with Emaar Properties to develop luxurious Armani Hotels and Resorts around the globe, a venture formed in 2005. The first opened in 2010, occupying eight floors of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The sumptuous 160-room hotel boasts eight restaurants, a spa and three retail outlets.

In 2011, an Armani Hotel opened in Milan, leaving a further, permanent mark on the city that houses his headquarters. “I like the idea of being remembered not only for my clothes, and I like to bring an element of luxury that adds prestige to the city,” the designer said upon the opening. “I love the Milanese and their sincere and direct approach. We hired 200 employees to work at the hotel. This is what I would like to happen going forward, for young people to find a job.”

The Milan hotel is opposite the city’s prestigious Via Montenapoleone shopping street, and near the La Scala Theater and is located in the 1937 building that also houses Armani’s Via Manzoni flagship. The latest Armani hotel being built is in Diriyah, a 300-year-old site located a 15-minute drive from Riyadh, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

In 1996, the designer raised a big Emporio Armani sign over a hangar at Linate — a genius stroke of branding in the pre-social media age with hundreds of millions of passenger eyeballs locking on it — and still doing so — as they taxi into, and out of, Linate. In September 2018, Armani decided to hold his coed Emporio show in that hanger, ending it with a performance by Robbie Williams for a crowd that numbered 2,300, including members of the public who won tickets to the event.

In 2006, Armani launched his One Night Only extravaganza, often showing his couture Privé collections and traveling through London in 2006; Tokyo in 2007; Beijing in 2012; Rome and New York in 2013; Paris in 2014; Dubai in 2021, and in Venice in 2023.

In October last year, the designer flew to New York to celebrate the opening of his company’s new building on Madison Avenue, entirely redesigned to include residential units, an Armani/Ristorante and the new Giorgio Armani and Armani/Casa boutiques. Coinciding with the unveiling, Armani decided to parade his namesake brand’s spring 2025 collection in New York and not in Milan.

In 2015, marking his company’s 40th anniversary, he unveiled his Armani Silos exhibition space — walking tirelessly up and down the four levels of the 48,600-square-foot building, in a restored granary of the Nestlé company and constructed in 1950. Armani, whose Tadao Ando-designed theater stands on the opposite side of the street, conceived and oversaw the renovation project himself. The building is modeled after a basilica layout, an open space four floors high with two levels of naves overlooking it on either side. The ceilings are painted black in contrast to the gray cement floors.

In addition to his own designs, Silos presented over the years exhibitions of photos by the likes of Larry Fink and Sarah Moon. He also launched the Filmaking Workshop at Silos, offered free of charge, which will allow participants to produce a short film, partnering with the likes of Luca Guadagnino.

Armani’s achievements earned him a string of high-profile awards that started with the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award in 1979 and included two of Italy’s highest honors — the Commendatore dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica and Grand’Ufficiale dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica. Others on the long list include the CFDA’s Best International Designer and Lifetime Achievement Award for menswear and for art and fashion, while, in 2006, he was awarded an honorary degree from London’s Central Saint Martin’s College and one in industrial design from the Politecnico of Milan. In 2008, French President Nicholas Sarkozy gave Armani the Legion d’Honneur. In 2019, WWD bestowed him the John B. Fairchild Honor award, named after WWD’s legendary publisher who was a longtime and ardent supporter of Armani — even wearing his clothes for years.

Armani also served as Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and in 2003, he was honored on the Rodeo Drive Walk of Style.

António Azevedo was in central Lisbon early on Wednesday evening, waiting to gather enough tourists for a ride in his tuk-tuk, when he heard what sounded like dozens of glass containers being dropped into rubbish trucks.

The driver looked around Restauradores Square but saw no trucks, only smoke rising from the lower station of the Elevador da Glória funicular railway, 100 metres from where his vehicle was parked.

Azevedo and other local business owners dashed to the scene to find that one of the Glória trams had derailed and crashed into a building in Avenida da Liberdade, Lisbon’s main artery.

Shocked, disoriented and unsure of what to do amid all the screaming and crying, the helpers began picking up metal pieces from the ground, wondering if they should try to lift what remained of the car’s main structure in case survivors were trapped beneath it.

One fellow rescuer passed a bleeding young boy to Azevedo, who held him as he cried for his father. Soon after, police and firefighters arrived at the scene and ordered Azevedo and the others not to touch or move anything.

“I remember looking around – the crying and the screaming gave way to complete silence,” said the 45-year-old driver. “There was a mountain of bodies that were not asking for help. They no longer moved; some were torn apart. I had never seen anything like it.”

Mohammad Farid rushed down from his souvenir store in Restauradores Square to help. But for many, it was already too late.

“We wanted to rescue people, to save lives,” Farid said. “But no one was asking for help because they were dead. They were dead in seconds.”

By Thursday morning, the scene of the accident – in which 16 people died and 21 were injured – was filled with flowers and candles to honour the dead and mark the national day of mourning declared by the Portuguese government.

The list of people caught up in the disaster reflected its international dimension. As well as Portuguese citizens, those being treated in hospital included people from Canada, Cape Verde, France, Germany, Italy, Morocco, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland. Prosecutors said on Thursday evening that the dead included five Portuguese citizens, two Koreans and one Swiss national.

A group of local people standing close by the site were discussing what could have caused the tragedy. In the 1970s, Argentina Pereira, now 80, used to work in the Suisso Atlântico Hotel in Rua da Glória, where the tram derailed.

She talked of the strain the funicular had been under since Lisbon began to establish itself as one of Europe’s biggest tourist magnets over the past decade.

“I used to take the funicular four times a day [in the 1970s],” she said. “It was a beautiful time, and a different time. Now they allow more than 40 people aboard, but back then, no more than 20 people could travel at the same time. I think 40 is probably too much, and if they want it that way, they should do periodic inspections every two weeks.”

Azevedo also felt the tragedy should lead to increased checks.

“I think that cities that receive a lot of tourists must guarantee high safety [standards] with this kind of infrastructure,” he said. “This is old infrastructure, and someone needs to answer for what happened.”

Although Carris, the municipal public transport company that operates the service, said “all maintenance protocols” had been carried out – including daily inspections and monthly and weekly service programmes – some visitors to Lisbon said they had been put off by the appearance of the funicular.

John Heron, a 75-year-old Australian who was on holiday in the Portuguese capital with his wife, Brenda, said he had thought the trams looked “dodgy” when he spotted them from the top of the hill of Rua da Glória a few days before the accident.

“In Australia, we have very high-quality regulation systems, and I am not so sure the same is true here in Portugal and for a lot of older infrastructures in Europe,” he said. “When I first saw the Glória funicular, it looked very unsafe, but I am not an engineer; it was just a feeling. When I saw the news, I thought, ‘Lucky we ended up staying at the hotel yesterday afternoon, or who knows if we would have ended up deciding to take the ride’.”

Others were also counting their blessings. Cristián Morgado, a 31-year-old tourist from neighbouring Spain, had been planning to ride the route on Wednesday afternoon with his partner, Soraya Navarro. In the end, they decided to do it in the morning.

“Since we saw what happened, we can’t stop thinking that it could have been us if we hadn’t changed our minds,” said Navarro, 30.

Despite Wednesday’s crash, which Portugal’s prime minister, Luís Montenegro, described as “one of the biggest tragedies in our recent history”, Morgado doubts tourists will be put off from visiting Lisbon.

“I don’t think this will affect tourism much,” he said. “Spain has a similar situation with overtourism, and now we are having a serious issue with pickpocketing, and foreigners know and that hasn’t stopped them.”

In a few weeks, he said, foreigners would probably have forgotten about all this. “Portuguese people won’t, but tourists will.”