The eleven towers
Walls walked whole above the white city.
Robert Nyman — CC BY 2.0 · Jan Helebrant — CC0 · Jan Helebrant — CC0 · Jan Helebrant — CC0
The castle is the royal view, ticketed, with walkable walls — the miradouros (Santa Luzia, Portas do Sol, Graça) are Alfama's free balconies at lower, warmer angles. For one day: castle for late afternoon and sunset, miradouros for morning — the ticket also buys you the walls' calm over the terraces' crush.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
São Jorge Castle is Lisbon's crown and origin: on its highest hill the Almoravids built the fort (11th century) over foundations reaching the Phoenicians — and here Afonso I stormed the city (1147) in the famous Siege of Lisbon, making it Portugal's royal castle three centuries before the river palaces. Today it is the city's finest balcony: walls and eleven towers walked in full, pine-and-olive courts patrolled by peacocks, and the mother view — the red-tile sea falling to the Tagus, the suspension bridge, the whole white city below. Within sit a three-layered dig (Iron Age, Islamic, medieval) and the camera obscura tower showing the living city through a turning lens — and the ascent is half the joy: tram 28, or the castle lanes' winding medieval quarter.
Walls walked whole above the white city.
The red sea falling to river and bridge.
The shade courts and their coloured tenants.
Rua de Santa Cruz do Castelo, 1100-129 Lisbon