After admiring the Castelo de São Jorge from many different angles since we arrived, we finally made a proper visit yesterday evening a little before sunset.
The Romans had created fortifications here by 48 BC, but most of the castle was built by the Moors in the 11th century. It was in ruins by the early 1900’s, then heavily reconstructed in the 1930’s and 1940’s, which is probably when most of the walls we see now were actually erected.
Regardless of the dates, it’s a beautiful place to walk around.
Cats rule Lisbon. We have a wide variety of cat photos stashed for an exciting future blog post, but for now here’s a castle cat, one of several we found lounging around on the stones.
It seems Tuesday evenings are a good time to visit the castle as there were no long lineups to get in like we’d seen on the weekend. This meant we could take endless photos without crowds obstructing the view — unless we got in each other’s way.
Anyway, it was a nice arch.
In addition to cats, the Castelo is also home to several very beautiful and very loud peacocks.
After climbing innumerable steep and railing-free stairs (it seems Portugal is not as litigious as North America) we were rewarded with pretty views of Lisbon through the castle turrets.
Instead of turrets, one of the towers had windows.
