The result of a joint initiative between the Italian Association of Urban History (AISU International) and the journal *Storia urbana* – which has already published its first issue – this second issue takes the form of a collection of articles and research papers on urban history, partly miscellaneous in nature and partly thematic. This latter section, designed to continue hosting studies on urban history in various national contexts in the future, begins, in this first edition, with a discussion on the ‘state of the art’ of research in Portugal.