Castelo de São Jorge (São Jorge Castle)

Walking the walls of São Jorge Castle

Inside the gate there’s no set route and no time limit until closing. The palace rooms went long ago, so what you walk through is walls, towers and gardens, with the city spread out around them.

The view from the Praça de Armas

The first viewpoint is on the Praça de Armas, the big terrace with an old cannon and a statue of Afonso Henriques, Portugal’s first king.

From up here the roofs of the Baixa, Lisbon’s downtown, run down to the Tagus, with the 25 de Abril Bridge, named after the 1974 revolution, in the distance.

Below the walls Alfama spills down the slope. To the east, the towers of the monastery church of São Vicente de Fora and the dome of the National Pantheon, where Portugal honours its great names, rise above its roofs.

The wall walks and the towers

For the higher views, get up on the walls. Three flights of stairs lead up to them, one from the first courtyard and two from the second. About ten towers stand along the walls, with one more in the middle, between the two courtyards.

The Observatory Tower is the highest of them. The Palace Tower, in the south-west corner, is the one the 1755 earthquake knocked down to just over 3 metres above the walls, and it had to be rebuilt. The Cistern Tower, as the name says, still has its cistern.

On the way round, look for the Traitor’s Gate in the north wall, a small door that let secret messengers in. Watch your step, too: visitors warn that the walks are narrow, with high steps and in places a handrail on one side only.

The peacocks in the pines

The peacocks are Indian peafowl, about 40 and counting, and they roost and breed in the stone pines and the bushes, so look up as well as down.

The castle keeps a scientific eye on them, with counts and health checks, and the chicks that hatch in April and May get a microchip. It also asks you not to feed them.

The camera obscura in São Jorge Castle’s Tower of Ulysses

Two parts of the castle can only be seen with a guide, the camera obscura and the archaeological site, and both are worth timing your visit around.

The Tower of Ulysses, the biggest of the towers, rises three floors over the main gate. Since 1999 a periscope at its top has projected a live picture of Lisbon inside, turning right round the city.

A guide runs each session, for up to 20 people and 20 minutes at most. It needs decent weather and only runs from 11:00 into the afternoon, so ask about it at the ticket office as soon as you arrive.

The archaeological site at São Jorge Castle

The other guided visit, À Descoberta do Castelo (discovering the castle), takes about an hour and is the only way into the archaeological site. Three periods of the hill lie there side by side.

First come the earliest settlements, from the 7th century BC. Then the houses of the Moorish quarter, from the time the castle was built, and the ruins of the last royal palace, destroyed in 1755.

Places are limited and go first come, first served at the ticket office. The tour runs in English at 11:00 all year, with later ones from March to October.

Castelo de São Jorge tickets and the Lisboa Card

One ticket covers the whole castle with no time limit, and the guided tour and the camera obscura come with it. The Lisboa Card includes entry for adults, though ages 13 to 15 pay even with the card.

The card, €31 for 24 hours, also covers bus 737 and tram 28E up the hill. Bought separately, the entry ticket comes with an audio guide and costs €26.56.

Entry isn’t timed, and any queue is at the ticket office. Visitors who were there for the 9:00 opening got in ahead of the cruise groups, and one who left just before sunset saw a much longer line to get in.

The castle’s small museum is closed for now while its toilets are upgraded, and the castle hasn’t said for how long. Visitors this year mention a café inside, though, for a sit-down.

Dogs aren’t allowed, apart from guide dogs. And visitors note that the towers and walls are reached by old stairs that wheelchairs can’t manage.

The Moorish and royal past of São Jorge Castle

People lived on this hill long before the castle. Archaeologists have found Iron Age settlements on its north and south sides, and Roman objects, though no Roman buildings.

The castle itself is Moorish. The Moors built it in the middle of the 11th century on the hardest-to-reach part of the hilltop, as the last stronghold of the citadel where Lisbon’s governor and officials lived.

On 25 October 1147 Afonso Henriques took Lisbon, and the castle became a royal home. In the 13th century the kings turned it into a palace, and from the 14th to the 16th century it saw royal guests, feasts and coronations.

Lisbon still tells the legend of Martim Moniz, a knight said to have jammed himself in a gate during the siege so the Moors couldn’t shut it. A metro station below the castle carries his name.

The decline began after 1580, when the kings of Spain also took the Portuguese crown. The castle went to the army, as barracks, prison and hospital, and the 1755 earthquake brought down what was left of the palace.

What you see today owes a lot to the works of 1938 to 1940. They pulled down the army’s buildings, its quarters, jail, powder stores and kitchens, and saved older buildings from among the ruins.

Some of it is new. The wooden doors of the main gate date from 1940, and the entrance gate in the outer wall was opened in 1939, modelled on 16th-century pictures.

Down from São Jorge Castle to the Sé and the river

Getting up here is the hard part. Bus 737 runs up from Praça da Figueira to the Castelo stop, two minutes from the gate. Tram 28E stops at Santa Luzia or Portas do Sol, five minutes away, though it has had detours lately.

From Martim Moniz metro it’s about 12 minutes on foot, with an escalator up from the Escadinhas da Saúde.

Coming back, it’s downhill all the way to the river, and the viewpoint at Santa Luzia, by the tram stop, is free.