Lori and I had a wonderful time visiting São Jorge Castle (St. George Castle), one of Lisbon’s most iconic landmarks. But it occured to us very soon afterwards that our experience at Castelo de São Jorge might have been a total bust if we’d done things just a little bit differently.
There are quite a few folks out there way too eager to paint Lisbon’s historic hilltop fortress as a hellish tourist trap. After visiting, I can see how that might be the case for many first-time visitors.
Fortunately, that was not our experience at all.
Here are five critical—yet super easy—things to avoid when visiting São Jorge Castle in Lisbon, plus our first-hand recommendations on the best ways to get tickets, how to get there, where to stay near the fort, and other nearby sights that you can easily combine with your visit.
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We’re going to change things up for this article and jump right into our five key points. However, I encourage you to keep reading for lots more useful information for planning your visit in the following sections.
It’s worth noting that the information and tips provided here are based on our own first-hand experience visiting the castle, plus some fairly extensive research before and after.
Please let us know in the comments below if you notice any changes during your own visit since the publishing of this article.
5 Mistakes to Avoid When Visiting Lisbon’s Castelo de São Jorge
Visiting after 11am
We’ve based ourselves in Lisbon for a couple of weeks now and plan to be here for a while. So, we haven’t felt rushed to take in all of the city’s top sites all at once, instead opting to spread them out as much as possible.
But with rain in the forecast next week, we thought it might be time to take on one of Lisbon’s most popular attractions: São Jorge Castle.
On this particular morning, we awoke to brilliant sunshine. We dropped everything and hightailed it down to the castle, arriving at the gate just after 10am.
The site had been open for just over an hour at this point, but there was still only a handful of people milling about.
For the better part of two hours, we enjoyed having this wonderful historic site to ourselves in many cases. Only in the last 30 minutes did we notice the crowds begin to swell.
When we left around noon, the lines to get in were horrendous.
This jives with the other traveler experiences we’ve come across and doesn’t seem to fluctuate much regardless of the day of the week you visit.
It might have something to do with the daily influx of visitors from large cruise ships docking in Lisbon on a daily basis. This happens year-round, with peak season being April through November.
Expect tourist numbers in the historic neighborhoods (including the Alfama where the castle is located) to swell by 1,000 to 3,000 people between the hours of 9am and 3pm. This, of course, is in addition to all of the non-cruise visitors hitting the sites around the same time.
✪ Hot Tip If you want to plan your visit taking into account cruise ship crowds, this cruise timetable site is the one we’ve found to be the most accurate and helpful so far.
If you happen to be a passenger on a cruise ship calling at Lisbon and are hoping for the best experience touring the castle, try to disembark as early as possible and make São Jorge Castle your first stop. You might even want to splurge for a tuk tuk, as it is a 15- to 20-minute walk, uphill, from the cruise ship terminal to the castle gate.
No matter your situation, you’ll likely have a better experience at the castle the earlier you get there. There is, however, one big benefit to visiting later in the day, which we’ll discuss in detail later in this guide.
Buying your tickets at the door
Fortunately, we got a good tip from a local friend who told us to buy our tickets online beforehand rather than buying them at the gate. We were glad we heeded this advice, as there were about 20 people already in line when we got to the castle at 10am.
Our online tickets allowed us to bypass the ticket line and head straight for the turnstyle, where I scanned our PDF tickets from my phone and strolled right in.
When we left the castle at around noon, even the line to scan your tickets was quite long, but not nearly as long as the ticket window line, which snaked out the big arch and into the adjacent neighborhood.
The easiest and most straightforward way to get tickets online is by purchasing a skip-the-line entry ticket on globally-trusted platforms such as Viator or GetYourGuide.
Included in the price of the ticket is a coordinator/greeter whose main function is to offer advice for your visit and answer any questions you may have when you arrive at the castle. They can also help get you setup with the audio guide as well.
If you go this route, you’ll pay a bit more than you would booking direct through the official site, but you won’t have any issues with non-Portugal credit cards, and won’t have to worry about testing your Portuguese skills.
These platforms also allow you to pay with a range of methods and offer some additional guarantees and protections.
✪ Hot Tip There’s even an option to pre-arrange (and pre-pay for) a guided-tour with no haggling on Viator and GetYourGuide as well.
We include a lot more information on buying tickets online (like how to book on the official Portuguese website) in the ‘How to Buy Tickets’ section later in this guide.
Thinking you can avoid a workout
There’s no easy way to say this—touring Lisbon’s São Jorge Castle does demand a bit of a workout. Afterall, it’s a fortress perched on a hill 300 feet (95m) above the water, with the final section being off-limits to motor vehicles.
Once you’ve arrived, it’s quite a few stairs to reach the top of the ramparts and even more steps to grab the best views from the towers.
It’s also a fairly large complex, which in itself requires a good amount of walking to see everything. All this adds up to just another reason to try to arrive as early in the day as possible to beat Lisbon’s afternoon heat during much of the year.
Don’t forget to bring enough water, and be sure to take lots of breaks (which come with the added benefit of incredible city views!).
✪ Hot Tip If you want to save on some of the walking, you can hire a tuk-tuk or taxi/Uber to get you pretty darn close. Still the last 5-10 minutes of the climb, you’ll have to do on foot, as motor vehicles are not allowed in the vicinity of the ticket office.
Saving the towers for last
If you arrive between 11am and 3pm, you can probably ignore this one. At this point in the day, there’s just no way to avoid the mayhem. The most popular part of the complex—the towers—will already be packed with visitors.
With that said, if you take our advice and arrive as early in the day as possible, you’ll most certainly want to hightail it to the towers, then work your way backwards.
Yes, the museum offers valuable contextual background info for your visit, and it’s hard not to get sucked into those amazing views of the city and Rio Tejo.
But trust me, it’s worth it to avoid having to squeeze by a dozen people trying to make their way down a set of medieval steps while you’re trying to inch your way to the top (you’ll have to repeat this feet at least a half dozen times up and back down if you want to see it all).
Read on for tips on the order in which we recommend seeing the various sites within the castle walls.
Not budgeting enough time
No matter what time of day you visit (or day of the week, or number of visitors, or what the weather is like, etc.), we think you’ll do yourself a huge diservice rushing your way through the Castelo.
Now, we totally understand that it’s tough to squeeze in all of Lisbon’s top sites in one, two, or even three days. For that reason alone, we strongly recommend allotting as much time to seeing Lisbon as you can budget—for most travelers, the city will not disappoint (3-5 days seems to be a good amount).
With regards to touring just Castelo de São Jorge, there’s easily enough to see here for most visitors to fill 2-3 hours. And don’t forget to take time to grab a seat along the outer walls, enjoy a snack, and take in the view.
Read on for lots of tips on how to visit and beyond.
How to Visit São Jorge Castle
How to buy tickets
As we mentioned earlier, there are a few ways you can buy tickets to St. George Castle in Lisbon.
The most obvious way is to buy them at the ticket window when you get here. We don’t recommend going this route if you can help it, as we hear there’s nearly always a line (which can grow to Biblical proportions by noon).
Instead, get your tickets online beforehand. It’s easy and will save you time in the long run.
If you just want the cheapest and most barebones method of buying a ticket online, you can try your luck here on the official website.
The upsides of going this route is that it is the cheapest online option and tickets are valid for three months from purchase (you don’t have to decide on a day and time up front).
However, the site defaults to Portuguese language, their payment system seems to be a bit picky (it didn’t want to take any of our U.S. cards, so I begrudingly went the PayPal route, which worked in the end), and you’ll be 100% on your own to figure things out when you arrive.
For most first-time visitors, we recommend buying skip-the-line tickets on Viator or GetYourGuide.
These tickets are a bit more, and you do have to select your date and time slot. But they include a coordinator/greeter to meet you at the castle, offer advice, and answer any questions you have.
Best of all, perhaps, is that you don’t have to worry about deciphering a new language or having multiple payment cards rejected.
✪ Hot Tip Regardless of which way you choose to get your tickets, it’s worth noting that ALL tickets include access to the Camera Obscura (Periscope) and archeological site, though both must be done as part of a guided tour (see next section for more information).
Do you need a guide?
No, you don’t need a guide to tour São Joao Castle. But we believe for many visitors, it will make the experience a lot more satisfying.
In hindsight, we wish we would have known about the time slots for the Periscope and Discovering the Castle tours.
If you’d like more out of your visit, here are your current options for guided tours.
Audioguide The least flashy and most cost-effective route. A basic audioguide is available on the castle’s official website for listening to on your own device as you proceed through the complex.
Free Guided Tours There are a couple of options to visitors included in the price of a standard ticket. However, these tours are only offered a handful of times each day, and time slots seem to fill up fast in most cases.
Camera Obscura / Periscope tours run daily (subject to weather) from 11am to anywhere from 1pm to 4pm, depending on the time of year.
Discovering the Castle tours (which include access to the archeological site) run daily for approximately one hour. Start times depend on tour language (see below), you must register at the Ticket Office beforehand (meaning standing in line), and tours are filled on a first-come, first-served basis.
- 11:00 – ENGLISH
- 11:30 – PORTUGUESE
- 15:00 – ENGLISH
- 15:30 – PORTUGUESE (April to September)
- 16:00 – ENGLISH (March to October)
- 18:00 – ENGLISH (May to August)
Top-Rated Small-Group Tours For those looking to get the most out of their time at São Jorge Castle (with as little legwork as possible), we strongly recommend hopping on a small group tour.
While you can certainly arrange one of these on the fly with various roving tour operators around town, we believe your best bet is to book one of the small group tours below offered through Viator or GetYourGuide. That way, you know exactly what you’re getting, what the price is, and what recent reviews say, with no surprises.
These are the top-rated tours on offer currently:
✪ Viator Lisbon: Skip-the-Line São Jorge Castle Guided Tour
✪ Get Your Guide Lisbon: São Jorge Castle Skip-the-Line Ticket with Guide
When to visit
Operating hours are from 9am to 9pm, March to October. From November to February, the castle is open from 9am to 6pm. Last admission is 30 minutes before closing.
The castle is open year-round, but closed on January 1, May 1, and December 24 & 25.
As mentioned above, we strongly recommend getting to the castle as early as possible, as crowds swell exponentially from 11am onward.
However, if you sign up for one of the free Periscope or Discovering the Castle tours, you’ll need to be in the castle grounds after 11am for the tour—no way around that one.
For the best weather, consider visiting in September/October and April/May, when temperatures aren’t quite as hot, but the rainy season isn’t in full swing. With a little luck and patience, however, ideal visiting days can be had year round in Lisbon.
How to tour the fort
We realize that the order in which you should see the castle’s various sights and features is largely subjective. If you go with a tour guide, they’ll undoubtedly have their own ideas of best ways in which to see and experience it.
If you’re seeing the castle for the first time on your own, we recommend starting early in the day and heading to the top of the ramparts and towers first, then slowly making your way back out.
The central fortification is likely the most interesting feature of the sprawling complex, and arguably the most popular. This central section can take upwards of an hour—more if you take time to view the Periscope.
Next, slowly make your way to the museum before finally ending at a relaxing spot along the outer walls to enjoy a snack and take in the city views.
Alternatively, you can follow the advice of the free Audioguide (see above), but realize that this might not be the most optimal order to view things if you want to avoid the worst of the crowds.
How to get there
There are a number of ways to get to São Jorge Castle, some less taxing than others.
Walking around central Lisbon, it’s hard not to catch glimpses of the the massive fortification atop one of the city’s highest hills. Finding your way up to the castle, however, probably looks easier than it actually is.
If you choose to walk there, your phone’s map app might just be your best friend, provided you route to the correct place. This is where the ticket office and turnstyles are actually located.
To assist you in your voyage to the castle, you can also employ the use of tuk-tuks, taxis, Ubers, buses, and even the historic Tram 28, which can also get you relatively close.
Look for the “Castelo” stop on the modern #737 bus route, or the “Portas do Sol” stop on the Tram 28 line. From here, it’s an uphill 10-minute walk to the ticket office.
Where to Go Next
After visiting São Jorge Castle, Lisbon is your oyster!
Since you’re already in the neighborhood, we recommend taking this time to explore the narrow, winding alleyways of the Alfama, Lisbon’s oldest bairro. The neighborhood includes a number of worthwhile miradouros (viewpoints) and the striking Lisbon Cathedral.
Next, head downhill into the bustling Baixa or squeeze onto Tram 28 (we recommend in the direction of Campo Ourique (Prazeres)—roughly southwest) for a memorable ride through Lisbon’s historic neighborhoods.
Alternatively, you can make your way down the hill towards the waterfront and Praça do Comércio to soak up the sun, before heading inland to explore the gridded streets of the Baixa and charming streets of Chiado.
Where to Stay Nearby
Lisbon’s got no shortage of top-notch accomodation options. These are our top picks in the Alfama, just steps away from São Jorge Castle.
✪ Our Top Pick Memmo Alfama has it all—central Alfama location, comfortable and super stylish rooms, breathtaking views from their rooftop pool and sundeck, and EarthCheck certified to boot!
✪ 5-Star, Award-Winning The Santiago de Alfama Boutique is lauded for being one of the best luxury hotels in the world—just steps away from St. George Castle. It’s downright loaded!—with charm, with sophistication, with world-class amenities. If you’re looking for the best of the best in Lisbon’s Alfama District, this is it.
✪ Top Pick for Families This 4-bedroom Alfama riverview apartment is our #1 pick for value, comfort, and convenience for families visiting Lisbon. Top-rated host, all the creature comforts of home, and lots of room to spread out, in the heart of Lisbon’s most historic quarter.
Final Thoughts
If you’re planning a trip to Lisbon, São Jorge Castle is a must-see destination. But…unlike the city’s dozens of other top sights, it’s not one you just show up to and expect a great time. In our minds, that would be a huge mistake!
In this guide, we’ve discussed five more common mistakes people make when they visit Castelo São Jorge, with easy recommendations for avoiding making each one.
Lori and I hope that you’ve found this article helpful and that your visit to São Jorge Castle ends up being a top highlight of your time in Lisbon like it was for us!
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