Castle of Saint George

Castelo de São Jorge is the fortified citadel on the highest of Lisbon's hills, and it is a defensive system rather than a single building. The castle proper — the walled quadrangular perimeter with eleven towers, wide wall-walks, a barbican and a moat, divided into two places-of-arms — took the shape a visitor sees today under Afonso III, who reigned from 1248 to 1279, and Denis, who reigned from 1279 to 1325. Daily 09:00–21:00 from March through October; daily 09:00–18:00 from November through February.

The ticket admits the holder to the whole monument and its gardens with no time limit within opening hours, and four distinct things sit inside the walls. The archaeological site is the excavated ground of the Praça Nova, where Iron Age rooms, two connected Islamic houses of 160 and 187 square metres with their painted stucco and their intact sewer running to a cesspit, and the medieval Bishops' Palace all sit within a few metres of each other.

Allow two hours. The castle does not publish an expected visit length — its own wording is that the ticket gives full access to the monument and its gardens without time constraints — so this figure is built from the parts it does time. The Discovering the Castle guided tour, which is the only way into the archaeological site, runs about an hour. The Camera Obscura tour is a maximum of twenty minutes. Two constraints shape the order.

The castle is open seven days a week and shuts only five days a year: 1 January, 1 May, and 24, 25 and 31 December. There is no weekly closing day and no midday break, which makes it one of the easier fixed points to build a Lisbon day around. Daily 09:00–21:00 from March through October; daily 09:00–18:00 from November through February. The ticket office has a wheelchair-access ramp and priority service. A surfaced accessible route runs from the entrance turnstiles to the eastern viewpoint. The museum entrance has a ramp, and a lifting platform serves one museum room.

A standard adult ticket is 17 euros. School groups from outside Lisbon Council pay 1.50 euros per student. Entry is free for children up to 12, for adult Lisboa Card holders, for the assistant accompanying a person with specific needs, for Portuguese national war veterans, and for APAC, APOM, ICOM and ICOMOS members. General adult admission is €17. The ticket includes the monument and gardens, the approximately one-hour Discovering the Castle tour, and the approximately 20-minute Camera Obscura tour; tour places and weather-dependent activities are subject to availability. The ticket office has a wheelchair-access ramp and priority service.

The entrance is on Rua de Santa Cruz, 1100-129 Lisboa, at the top of the hill, and every route ends with a climb. Tram 28E leaves a five-minute walk, either from the Santa Luzia viewpoint stop or from Largo Portas do Sol. Use them; the difference is considerable. The main entrance is on Rua de Santa Cruz do Castelo. Carris bus 737 stops at Castelo on Chão da Feira, about a two-minute walk away. Tram 28E stops at Miradouro de Santa Luzia or Largo das Portas do Sol, about five minutes away. Rossio, Martim Moniz, and Baixa-Chiado metro stations involve uphill walks of approximately 11, 12, and 15 minutes respectively; the Rossio and Baixa-Chiado routes can use the Chão do Loureiro lift, while the Baixa-Chiado route also uses the Castelo lift.

The peacocks that wander the gardens are the thing visitors most often get wrong. The castle asks people not to feed them at all: unsuitable food makes them ill or kills them, and the hens with chicks turn defensive, so the instruction is to keep a distance rather than to crouch down with a sandwich. The second trap is the closing sequence. The ticket office has a wheelchair-access ramp and priority service. The museum entrance has a ramp, and a lifting platform serves one museum room. One toilet is wheelchair accessible and includes baby-changing facilities.

Photography and filming are allowed throughout for private use. Anything with a commercial or communications purpose falls under the castle's general conditions and rules and needs to be cleared first; the castle also publishes high-quality photographs for download, reusable with a copyright credit and not commercially. The subject everyone comes for is the view. Inside the walls, the ramparts give the elevation for the frames looking down into the castle courtyards, so shoot those before the wall-walks close. One toilet is wheelchair accessible and includes baby-changing facilities. Four wheelchairs and one Swiss-Trac wheelchair tractor are available.