São Jorge Castle tickets: €17, free guided tours included, and open every day but five

💡 The Short Version: The ticket is €17, from castelodesaojorge.pt, the ticket office or the machines at the gate, and it includes free guided tours in English, so it needs no add-on. It is open seven days a week: 9:00 to 21:00 until 31 October, 9:00 to 18:00 from 1 November, closed only on 1 January, 1 May, and 24, 25 and 31 December. The wall-walks and towers close earlier, so a summer sunset visit can miss them. Adult Lisboa Card holders go free. Or book a tour: the small-group Old Town walk with castle ticketsad (from £58.94, GetYourGuide, 1 October 2026) adds a guide through Alfama. GetYourGuide’s audio-guide and guided-ticket listings cost £6.69 to £13.66 more than the castle’s own ticket.

The tickets, compared

Official prices from the castle’s ticket page, 1 October 2026, converted at the ECB rate of 30 September 2026 (€1 = £0.855). GetYourGuide prices are its lowest “from” price on 1 October 2026.

• The ticket carries no time limit. You can stay for any part of the opening hours.
• The guided tours are included. “Discovering the Castle” lasts up to an hour, and the camera obscura tour up to 20 minutes. Both are first come, first served, and you reserve your place at the ticket office when you arrive.
• Guide dogs are welcome; other pets are not. Peacocks live in the grounds, and the castle asks visitors not to feed them or go near the chicks.
• No family ticket is listed.

How to buy

• Online: from castelodesaojorge.pt, through BOL (Bilheteira Online), the only authorised online seller. The ticket can be shown on a phone, and buying online avoids the ticket-office queue. Discounted tickets bought online still need proof at the entrance.
• At the gate: the ticket office is to the right of the entrance on Rua de Santa Cruz do Castelo, with automatic machines beside it. The office takes cash, Multibanco, Visa, MB Way, Revolut, American Express and Mastercard.
• Holders of a ticket skip the ticket line and go straight to the entrance.
• Lisboa Card holders use the “Lisboa Card/Residents” queue at the ticket office. See is the Lisboa Card worth it?.

Tours worth paying for

The ticket already includes a guided tour, so a paid tour has to do something else: take you through Alfama, or get you there. Prices are GetYourGuide’s lowest “from” price on 1 October 2026, per person.

A small-group walk through Alfama with castle tickets

From £58.94 · 5.0 stars from 58 reviews · 3 hours

Lisbon: Small-Group Old Town Walking Tour & Castle Ticketsad meets in front of the castle’s first gate and goes in with the tickets included, then walks Alfama, with a tasting of ginjinha, the sour cherry liqueur, at a local’s house. Groups are capped at 20. It costs about £44 more than the entry ticket, and the difference buys the walk and the tasting. Free cancellation.

Tram 28 and an Alfama walk, ending with a custard tart

From £29.04 · 4.8 stars from 167 reviews · 2½ to 3 hours

Lisbon: Tram 28, Alfama, and Custard Tart Walking Tourad rides the 28E up the hill, walks down through Alfama past the Santa Luzia and Portas do Sol viewpoints and the cathedral, and stops at a bakery where custard tarts are made. The castle ticket is not included. Free cancellation.

What to see

The castle stands on the hill above Alfama; the operator dates the first settlement on the site to the 7th century BC, and its archaeology covers three periods. The visit has four parts, in this order:

1. The tours, first. Reserve a place at the ticket office on arrival. “Discovering the Castle” runs in English at 11:00 and 15:00 every day, at 16:00 from March to October and at 18:00 from May to August. It is the only way into the archaeological site, which shows the 7th-century BC settlement, an 11th-century Moorish quarter and the ruins of the palace of the Counts of Santiago, destroyed in the 1755 earthquake.
2. The camera obscura. An optical system of lenses and mirrors in the Ulysses Tower gives a live, 360-degree view of the city, in a tour of up to 20 minutes for at most 20 people. It runs at set hours, weather permitting: 11:00 to 13:00 from October to February, 11:00 to 14:00 in March, 11:00 to 15:00 in April and September, and 11:00 to 16:00 from May to August.
3. The wall-walks and towers. The views over Baixa, the river and the Ponte 25 de Abril. In summer they can close between 18:00 and 21:00, depending on daylight, and in winter at 17:30.
4. The grounds. Gardens, squares and viewpoints. The accessible route runs from the turnstiles to the eastern viewpoint.

Allow at least two hours, which covers the tour, the camera obscura and the walls. What to skip: an audio guide bought elsewhere: the ticket includes the tours, and the castle publishes its own audio guide at castelodesaojorge.pt/audioguias/site, in six languages. On 1 October 2026 the castle’s museum was closed while its toilets were upgraded.

A wall and tower of the Castelo de São Jorge. Photo: NorbertNagel, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Hours and getting there

• Summer, 1 March to 31 October: 9:00 to 21:00, last admission 20:30.
• Winter, 1 November to the end of February: 9:00 to 18:00, last admission 17:30.
• Closed: 1 January, 1 May, and 24, 25 and 31 December. The castle is open on Mondays, when the Jerónimos Monastery and Belém Tower are closed. See what to book before you go in Lisbon for the days the others close.
• Bus: the 737 from Praça da Figueira to the Castelo stop at Chão da Feira, then two minutes on foot.
• Tram: the 28E or 12E to Miradouro de Santa Luzia or Largo Portas do Sol, then five minutes on foot. The tram and funicular guide covers the routes and fares.
• Metro and lifts: from Rossio metro it is an 11-minute walk, from Martim Moniz 12 minutes and from Baixa-Chiado 15, all uphill. Two lifts on the castle’s own directions shorten the climb: the Castelo lift from Rua dos Fanqueiros 176, and the Chão do Loureiro car-park lift, entered from Largo do Caldas and leaving on Costa do Castelo.
• Reduced mobility: the castle has a ticket-office ramp, four wheelchairs and a regularised route to the eastern viewpoint, and asks visitors to get in touch a day ahead if they need to arrive by car.

Baixa’s roofs and the Praça do Comércio from the Castelo de São Jorge. Photo: Peter K Burian, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

For Belém, the other big monument, see the Jerónimos Monastery and Belém Tower guides, both closed on Mondays. For when the castle’s hours change and which days it closes through the year, see best time to visit Lisbon; for a cruise day, Lisbon cruise port to the city centre.

The castle is Day 1 of 3 days in Lisbon and the afternoon of Lisbon in one day. To sleep under it, the Alfama and the castle section of the where to stay guide lists the hotels, and Lisbon public transport has the Metro and bus fares for the way up.