Castelo de São Jorge Tickets and Opening Hours
17 EUR at the gate, open every day of the year but five and until 21:00 from March to October. Eight listings here, 702 reviews, and one 31 EUR product carrying 567 of them.
The Castelo de São Jorge sells one ticket. 17 EUR for an adult, 14 at 65 and over, 8.50 between 13 and 25, 12 for visitors with specific needs, and that is the whole price list. No circuits, no tiers, no time slot, and no published priority lane. It is also open every day of the year except five, which makes it the one monument in Lisbon that never blocks a plan. Two things inside that single ticket are not simply walked into, and almost nobody says so before you buy: the Câmara Escura and the archaeological site are reached only on the guided visit that comes with the ticket, at hours that move with the season.
The catalogue side of this monument is the thinnest in Portugal and the most lopsided. Eight listings, all from one supplier. The median is 39 EUR and the third quartile is 150, because two of the eight are private tours and the rest are short: four run under two hours, the median length is 135 minutes, and none of them is a day trip. Seven of the eight carry free cancellation and none confirms instantly.
The included guided visit is the part worth planning around. Discovering the Castle runs about an hour and is offered in Portuguese, English and Spanish for group tours, and it is the only way into the archaeological site. An individual visitor pays nothing extra for it; organised groups pay 4.50 EUR a head on top of the ticket and school parties 3.50. Miss it and you have paid for two things you never reached, which is an odd way for a single-ticket monument to work and the reason this page spends longer on inclusions than on price.
Then the number that should be read before any rating on this page. 567 of the 702 reviews belong to a single listing, a 31 EUR skip-the-line ticket rated 4.7. The weighted average for the category, 4.708, is essentially that product's score with a rounding error attached. The best rated here is a 33 EUR walk through the Alfama ending at the castle, a flat 5.0 over 60 reviews. Eight listings do not make an average.
Alfama Guided with Coffee and Pastries In, the Castle on Your Own After
The coffee and pastries at Quase Café are included, the guided part is Alfama, and the castle ticket is handed over at the gate for a visit at your own pace.
Alfama Up to the Castle in Three Hours, Told Through the Siege of 1147
Three hours climbing from the church of St Anthony to the castle, past the Roman theatre ruins, with the guide buying the tickets and skipping the line.
Private Alfama Downhill from the Castle, Past the Judiaria and the King's Fountain
The route runs downhill from the castle to Commerce Square, through the old Jewish street, the Moorish wall and the 13th-century fountain the city drank from.
Rossio to the Castle First, Then Down Through Alfama, with a Coffee Stop
This one does the castle first and Alfama afterwards, downhill past Portas do Sol and Santa Luzia, with a coffee stop in between. Meet at the south fountain.
Medieval Lisbon for Families, with Games Between the Cathedral and the Castle
Built for children: games and trivia between the Saramago Foundation, the cathedral and the castle, with skip-the-line tickets for São Jorge at the end.
Skip the Hour-Long Queue at São Jorge, Ticket and Map Handed Over
The queue at the castle can run to more than an hour. Here someone waits at the meeting point with your ticket and a map, and walks you in through the gate.
Sixty Minutes Guided Inside São Jorge, Then the Castle Is Yours
The guide brings the tickets and runs sixty minutes through the castle and its Moorish-quarter finds, then leaves you to stay on as long as you want.
São Jorge E-Ticket with Two Audio Tours, the Castle and the City
One e-ticket, two audio tours on your own phone, the castle and a self-guided city walk, and both keep working before and after the visit, as often as you like.
Ratings collected by Viator and Tripadvisor
One ticket, and the two things it does not simply open
| General admission | Câmara Escura | Archaeological site | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | 17 EUR adult, 14 at 65 plus, 8.50 at 13 to 25, 12 with specific needs | Included in the ticket | Included in the ticket |
| How you get in | Walk in with a ticket | Only on its own guided visit, 20 minutes at most | Only with the included Discovering the Castle tour |
| When | 09:00 to 21:00 from 1 March to 31 October, 09:00 to 18:00 the rest of the year | 11:00 to 13:00 in winter, 11:00 to 16:00 in summer, weather permitting | At the tour's times, which are not published on the pages we read |
| Languages | None needed | Not published | Portuguese, English and Spanish for group tours |
| Extra cost | None | None | None, though organised groups pay 4.50 EUR a head and school parties 3.50 |
The Câmara Escura is a periscope in one of the towers that projects a live image of the city onto a dish, and it is the part of this visit people remember. It runs for at most twenty minutes at a time, it depends on the weather, and in winter it operates for two hours a day. A visitor who arrives at 15:00 in January has bought a ticket that includes it and will not see it. The archaeological site has the same shape of problem: it is inside the price and behind a guided visit, and if you miss the tour you have paid for something you did not enter.
The fourteen euro question
The gate charges 17 EUR. The most sold listing in this catalogue charges 31 EUR and calls itself a skip-the-line ticket. The castle publishes a single general admission ticket and no priority lane, and it operates no timed entry, so there is no queue inside the system to be moved forward in. Three of the eight listings here use the phrase.
It is worth being exact about what the difference does buy, because it is not nothing. A ticket already in hand means the ticket desk is not part of your visit, and at a monument that opens at 09:00 in a city that arrives by tram, that is a real saving on a summer morning. Free cancellation comes with it, which the castle's own counter does not offer. One of the eight bundles an audio tour of the castle and of the city. What it does not buy is a separate door, and any listing that implies otherwise is describing a lane the castle does not have.
The honest arithmetic: 14 EUR over the gate price, for a queue that is not measured or published, at a site with no capacity cap on record. Against that, at the Belém Tower across the city there is a hard cap of sixty visitors at a time, and there nobody claims to skip anything at all.
The terrace over the Alfama is the product
What this ticket really buys is the view in the photograph beside this one, taken from the roofs below the castle walls. The site is a circuit of curtain wall, towers, gardens and terraces rather than a museum with rooms, and the listings reflect it: the median length here is 135 minutes and half of them are under two hours.
That shape has a practical consequence the ticket page does not spell out. In summer the castle stays open until 21:00, but the walls and towers close somewhere between 18:00 and 21:00 depending on the light available. Buy an evening entry in March and the ground you came for may already be shut while the site itself is still open.
Open every day, and how long the walls stay open
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
There is no weekly closing day here at all. The gate shuts on five dates in the year and no others: New Year's Day, 1 May, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and 31 December. That list is worth comparing with the one at the other end of the city, where the state agency also closes on Easter Sunday and on 13 June for Santo António. The castle, which belongs to Lisbon, stays open on Lisbon's own saint's day. The tower, which belongs to the state, does not. Two calendars, one city, and the ownership explains it.
The site does not publish a recommended visit length. A reseller says about two hours, which is second hand and roughly matches the 135 minute median of the listings here, so treat it as a reasonable planning figure rather than as an official one.
The ground, and the peacocks
The castle publishes a page of warnings that reads like it was written by somebody who has watched what happens. The paving is uneven, the steps are of unequal height, and both become slippery when wet. Parents are asked to keep hold of children on the walls, where the parapets are low. None of that is unusual for a hillfort with a Moorish curtain wall, and all of it matters more in a place that stays open until nine at night, when a stone stair that was easy at noon is being walked in the dark.
The other rule is about the peacocks, which live in the grounds and are entirely used to people. Visitors are asked not to feed them, for two reasons the site gives plainly: the food people offer can kill them, and the mothers are protective of their chicks. It is the only house rule in this catalogue that protects the visitor and the animal in the same sentence.
Photography for private use is allowed. Commercial use needs written permission, and the castle publishes its own images for non-commercial use provided they are credited, which is more than most monuments in this catalogue do.
Who runs it, and why that changes the rules
This is a municipal monument. EGEAC, the culture company owned by the city of Lisbon, runs it, and the Portuguese state has nothing to do with it. That is invisible at the gate and decides two things behind it. The first is the calendar, which is why this monument stays open on 13 June while the state's tower closes. The second is the free-entry scheme: Acesso 52, the state arrangement that gives residents of Portugal fifty-two free days a year at national monuments, covers the Belém Tower and the castle at Guimarães and does not cover this castle. A resident who has planned a free day here has planned it at the wrong monument.
What eight listings can and cannot tell you
This is the smallest category in the Portuguese catalogue and the one where the numbers most need a warning label. Eight listings, all from Viator, so a single supplier decides what is on this page. Four run under two hours and two are simply an entry within two hours; none is a day trip, which is the correct shape for a monument in the middle of a city. The median is 39 EUR and the third quartile is 150, and that gap is two private tours rather than a spread of ordinary prices.
The rating needs the same caution. A weighted 4.708 across 702 reviews sounds like a verdict on a castle and is very nearly the verdict on one product, since 567 of those reviews belong to the 31 EUR ticket. The highest rated listing here points somewhere more useful: a 33 EUR walk through the Alfama that finishes at the castle, a flat 5.0 across 60 reviews. What people rate highly is the climb through the neighbourhood with the castle at the end of it, rather than the castle bought on its own.
Questions people ask about the Castelo de São Jorge
How much is a ticket?
17 EUR for an adult, 14 at 65 and over, 8.50 between 13 and 25, and 12 for visitors with specific needs. There is one general admission ticket and no upgrade to buy. In this catalogue the median listing is 39 EUR, with a third quartile of 150 because two of the eight are private tours.
Is skip the line worth it here?
There is no priority lane to skip: the castle sells one ticket and runs no timed entry. What the 31 EUR listing gives over the 17 EUR gate price is a ticket already in hand and free cancellation. That is a 14 EUR premium for missing the desk, which some mornings is worth it and some mornings is not.
Does the Lisboa Card cover it?
Yes, free, and this contradicts a lot of published advice that still lists the castle as excluded or discounted. It appears in the free-entry list on the castle's own ticket page as well as on the card issuer's. Check before paying 17 EUR at the desk.
What is the Câmara Escura and is it included?
A periscope in one of the towers that throws a live image of the city onto a dish. It is included in the ticket and can only be seen on its own short guided visit, at most 20 minutes long, running 11:00 to 13:00 in winter and 11:00 to 16:00 in summer, and it depends on the weather.
When does it close?
Doors close at 21:00 between 1 March and 31 October, with the last visitor admitted at 20:30. From 1 November those two times become 18:00 and 17:30. The walls and towers shut earlier than the site does in summer, somewhere between 18:00 and 21:00 according to the light, and no day of the week is a closing day.
Which days is it shut?
Five: 1 January, 1 May, 24 December, 25 December and 31 December. It stays open on 13 June, the city's own saint's day, when the Belém Tower closes. The two monuments answer to two different owners and keep two different calendars.
How long should I allow?
The castle does not publish a figure. A reseller says about two hours and the listings here have a median length of 135 minutes, which is close enough to be a fair planning number. Add time if you want the Câmara Escura, which runs at fixed hours and takes up to 20 minutes of its own.
Data verified on. Prices, hours, inclusions and house rules from castelodesaojorge.pt, run by EGEAC. Listing figures from the 8 São Jorge products in this catalogue. Visit length is second hand.