Portugal document photos online

In 2006 Portugal quietly retired five different documents at once. The Cartão de Cidadão replaced the old identity card, the social-security card, the national-health card, the taxpayer card and the voter-registration card with a single polycarbonate eID. Inside sits a chip using "match-on-card" technology, so your fingerprints are checked against the card itself and never stored in a central database. The same year the country switched to biometric e-passports. For a nation whose land border was drawn in 1297 and has barely moved since, Portugal turned out to be startlingly modern about the paperwork of identity.

• Passport power In the 2025 Henley Passport Index the Portuguese passport climbed to 4th place in the world, granting visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 188 destinations.
• One card, five documents Portugal's Cartão de Cidadão, introduced in 2006, merged the identity card, social-security card, health-service card, taxpayer card and voter-registration card into a single secure eID.
• Biometric chip The Citizen Card keeps fingerprints on the card itself using match-on-card technology, verifying your prints locally so they are never held in a central government database.
• Oldest border Portugal's frontier with Spain was fixed by the 1297 Treaty of Alcanices and has remained almost unchanged for over 700 years, making it the oldest defined border in Europe.
• Sephardic citizenship From 2015 Portugal offered citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled in the 1490s; the generous route was tightened in 2024, eventually closing the original window.
• Currency name Portugal's pre-euro currency, the escudo, literally meant "shield" after the coat of arms on its coins, and replaced the old real in May 1911 at a rate of 1,000 reis to one escudo.
• Conto Portuguese still casually count in "contos": one conto meant 1,000 escudos, a habit inherited from the previous "conto de reis" worth one million reis.
• Euro switch The escudo was locked to the euro on 1 January 1999 at 200.482 escudos per euro, and escudo notes circulated for the last time until 28 February 2002.
• Oldest bookstore Lisbon's Livraria Bertrand, founded in 1732, is recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest operating bookstore on Earth.