Plan a Trip to Lisbon

First, how many days. Two covers the city — Belém one morning, the castle side the other — and three adds Sintra, which does not fit into a half day once the thirty-minute walk from the park gate to Pena's door is counted. A fourth day is Cascais, the Arrábida coast or Évora; a week is Porto by train at €35.70 on the Alfa Pendular.

Second, which days. Belém's state monuments shut Monday, the Sé and the Carmo shut Sunday, MAAT and the Gulbenkian shut Tuesday, so lay the days over the calendar before you book anything. Third, what to book: two slots, a Belém Tower time and a Pena Palace time, and then the cloister ticket for the queue.

Everything after that is a fare table and a weather chart, which is what the rest of this page is.

Belém Tower first. It reopened on 27 May 2026 after thirteen months of conservation works with a slot system it never had, the interior is one spiral stair, and the afternoon slots in summer go days ahead; only the state monuments' shop sells them. Pena Palace second: a dated and timed slot for the palace interior, refused if you are late with no change or refund, at the top of a thirty-minute uphill walk from the park gate — book the slot or book a tour that carries it.

Then the Jerónimos cloister, which does not sell out but queues, at the same €18 online as at the desk; and the Oceanário, priced by hour, where the platform's ticket at €25 matches the cheapest official tier. Fado houses take a table booking and the walking food tours sell out on weekends. Nothing else in the city needs a date.

Museus e Monumentos de Portugal, the state body, shuts Jerónimos, Belém Tower, the Coach Museum, the Pantheon, Ajuda and the Tile Museum every Monday, and on 1 January, Easter Sunday, 1 May, 13 June and 25 December. The Sé and the Carmo close on Sunday. MAAT and the Gulbenkian close on Tuesday, Ajuda on Wednesday.

The castle, the Oceanário, the Monument to the Discoveries, Cristo Rei, São Vicente and the Pena Palace open every day of the week. Then the standing closures with no weekday at all: the Glória, Bica and Lavra funiculars and the Santa Justa lift since 3 September 2025, the Tile Museum since 1 November 2025, the Pilar 7 lift under repair. 13 June is Lisbon's own holiday, Santo António, and the night before it is the city's biggest street party; the state monuments are shut on the day.

Lisbon is dry from June to September — July averages 2.6 mm of rain — and wet from October to February, with November the wettest month at 133.9 mm and ten rainy days. August is the hottest at 28.8°C average high with ten days over 30°C; the record is 43.3°C on 4 August 2018. The shoulder months are the argument: May at 23.1°C and 5.8 rainy days, October at 22.8°C and 8.7.

The best-time page draws this as a chart with the crowd and closure bands; the events calendar adds the dates.

The airport is on the metro's red line, Aeroporto station, at the ordinary fare — €1.90 for a ticket, €1.72 with zapping on a €0.50 navegante card bought at the machine, €1.92 by contactless bank card — with no airport surcharge in the 2026 tariff and trains from 06:30 to 01:00. No Aerobus appears on any Carris or Metro page and the airport's own transport page would not render for us, so we do not print one. Bus 744 runs from the airport to Restauradores at €2.30 on board, and a private transfer is listed at €24.

In the city, the 24-hour Carris and Metro pass is €7.25, €11.40 with the CP lines to Sintra and Cascais, and neither includes the funiculars or Santa Justa even when they run. Tram 28 is €3.30 on board, or €1.72 with zapping, and the queue at Martim Moniz is the reason to ride it before 8:30 or after 19:00. The getting-around page has the full table and the tram 28 page the boarding strategy; a hop-on hop-off ticket is a sightseeing loop, not a transport pass.

The tourist tax is €4 per person per night, charged from age 13, for a maximum of seven nights, collected by the accommodation and not included in most online room rates; the exemption list is set in the city's fee regulation and was not readable on the service page we fetched. A cruise passenger pays a separate arrival tax whose amount the city page did not state. The free-museum rule is the other surprise: since 1 August 2024 the state museums and monuments are free on Sundays, holidays and 52 days a year for Portuguese citizens and residents only; a visitor pays full price on Sunday, and the pages still promising free Sunday mornings are two years out of date.

Under-12s enter free every day regardless. The Lisbon costs page prices a full day three ways; the where-to-stay page adds the tax to each area's room rate.