Alfama, Lisbon

The name is Arabic — al-hamma, the hot springs, for the baths that stood near the river at Largo do Chafariz de Dentro — and the street plan is Moorish: a hillside of lanes built to defend and to shade, no straight line longer than a few houses, stairs where a street would be too steep. Under the Moors this was the city; after 1147 the nobility moved up to the castle and later to the Baixa, and Alfama became the fishermen's and dockers' quarter it stayed until the 20th century.

The earthquake of 1 November 1755 flattened the Baixa and the Chiado and left the Alfama hill, on its bedrock, mostly standing. Everything below it was rebuilt on the Marquis of Pombal's grid; Alfama was not, which is why its lanes are the one place the medieval city can still be walked. The churches were rebuilt — the Sé lost its Gothic east end, São Vicente its dome — but the houses, the stairs and the fountains are older than anything in the centre.

What it is now: a quarter of about four thousand residents, many of them elderly, with fado houses that open at 20:00, festas in June for Saint Anthony when every lane grills sardines, and short-term rentals in a rising share of the houses. It is not a museum, and the people hanging washing over your head live there.

São Jorge Castle

The top of the hill and the start of the day. Open every day but five, €17 (about $20) with the ramparts, the towers and the included guided tour to the archaeological site; ninety minutes. The castle page has the rampart closure rule by daylight and the three ways up, and the tickets page the discounts and the one listing that claims a fast lane.

Portas do Sol and Santa Luzia

Five minutes below the castle gate on the tram line, the two terraces every photograph of Alfama is taken from: rooftops falling to the river, the white dome of the Pantheon, São Vicente's twin towers. Santa Luzia has the tile panels of pre-earthquake Lisbon and the bougainvillea; Portas do Sol has the wider view and the café. Both free, both packed from 10:00 when the tram unloads; both empty at 08:30.

São Vicente de Fora and the Pantheon

Ten minutes east along the ridge. The monastery of São Vicente, €8 (about $9), €6 with the Lisboa Card, has the largest set of 18th-century tile panels in the city, the Braganza royal pantheon and a roof terrace; open daily. The National Pantheon next door, €10 (about $12), closed Mondays, has the tombs of Amália and Eusébio and the better terrace.

On Tuesday and Saturday mornings the Feira da Ladra flea market fills Campo de Santa Clara between them.

The lanes: Santo Estêvão, São Miguel, the Beco do Mexias

Back at Santa Luzia, take any stair downhill. The lanes between here and the river are the quarter: Largo de Santo Estêvão with its own small viewpoint, the church of São Miguel, the Beco do Mexias and Rua de São Pedro where the fado houses are, Largo do Chafariz de Dentro at the bottom with the old fountain and the Fado Museum. Getting lost is the method; every lane ends at the river or the tram line within ten minutes.

The Sé and Santo António

West along Rua de São João da Praça to Largo da Sé: the cathedral, €7 (about $8) for the whole circuit, closed Sundays, forty-five minutes; the church of Santo António beside it on the saint's birthplace, free. From here the Baixa is seven minutes downhill and the loop is closed.

Bus 737 from Praça da Figueira to the castle gate for 09:00, or the 08:30 tram 28 from Martim Moniz to Portas do Sol and eight minutes uphill on foot. Castle until 10:30. Down to Portas do Sol and Santa Luzia while the tram crowd is still queuing at Martim Moniz. East along Rua de São Tomé and Calçada de São Vicente to the monastery and the Pantheon by 11:15, one of them or both; the flea market if it is Tuesday or Saturday. Back to Santa Luzia by 12:30 and down through the lanes — Santo Estêvão, São Miguel, Chafariz de Dentro — to the river, then west along the foot of the hill to the Sé by 13:15 and lunch in the Baixa.

That is about four kilometres, most of it downhill, with the only real climb done by bus. Reverse it and you climb the whole way in the afternoon sun. The Best of Lisbon walking tour covers Rossio, Chiado and Alfama in three hours from Rossio; the history and lifestyle walk is the deeper Alfama version; the e-bike tour does Alfama, Mouraria and Graça with the hills switched off.

Alfama is where fado is sung to tourists and, on the right night, to itself. The fado houses on Rua de São Pedro, Rua dos Remédios and around Largo do Chafariz de Dentro open around 20:00, serve dinner and sing in sets until midnight; the rule in every one is silence during the song. Prices are the house's own and not published in any list we would cite, so book through a venue's own site or take a ticketed show: the Fado in Chiado show is 50 minutes without dinner across town, and the food and wine walk ends in a fado house. The Museu do Fado at Chafariz de Dentro is the daytime version.

The Festas de Santo António in June turn the lanes into a two-week street party with grilled sardines on every corner, peaking on the night of 12 June; the events calendar has the dates. For the rest of the year the evenings are quiet, the restaurants in the inner lanes close early, and the walk back down to the Baixa after midnight is on badly lit stairs — fine, but take the tram line rather than the lanes.

• Fado: from about 20:00; silence during the song; book a table through the house's own site
• Festas: the week around 12 June; sardines, arraiais, no sleep for anyone staying in the quarter
• After dark: the lanes are safe but unlit; the safety page has the tram-28 pickpocket rule, which applies here too

Alfama's inner lanes have the tasca tables with the atmosphere and, in the tourist stretch between Portas do Sol and the Sé, the menus with photographs. We do not name restaurants without a citable list — Michelin, Slow Food, a guide with a dated entry — and none of our sources for this page carries one for the quarter, so the where to eat page does that job for the whole city. Two rules that need no list: The rest of the city, hub by hub, is on the Visit Lisbon Guide homepage. a lunch with a view at Portas do Sol costs café prices for the view, and the grilled fish is on the lanes below, not the terraces above.

Cacilhas across the river, ten minutes by ferry from Cais do Sodré, is where the city goes for fish; the Cristo Rei page has the crossing.

Alfama is the centre, or the eastern edge of it: from Praça do Comércio the Sé is seven minutes uphill, from Rossio twenty minutes, from Praça da Figueira fifteen. Santa Apolónia station — the CP terminus for the north and the cruise terminal — is at the bottom of the hill's eastern side, ten steep minutes below the Pantheon, and is the 'city centre train station' most people mean when they ask; Rossio station, for Sintra, is the twenty-minute walk. The nearest metro stations are Terreiro do Paço and Santa Apolónia, both blue line.

Tram 28 from Martim Moniz stops at Calçada de São Vicente, Portas do Sol, Santa Luzia and the Sé; €3.30 (about $3.90) on board, €1.72 with zapping, free with the 24-hour €7.25 pass or the Lisboa Card. Tram 12 runs a shorter clockwise loop from Praça da Figueira through the same Alfama stops with a shorter queue. Bus 737 from Praça da Figueira is the only vehicle that reaches the castle gate. On foot the way in is up from the Sé or down from the castle; the way out is any stair to the river. Taxis and tuk-tuks reach the tram line and Largo do Chafariz de Dentro, not the inner lanes.

Everything in the quarter is within fifteen minutes of Santa Luzia on foot, and nothing in the inner lanes can be reached any other way: no bus, no tram, no taxi below the tram line. The trade is the gradient — from the river at Chafariz de Dentro to the castle gate is about 90 metres of climb by stairs and cobbles, with no step-free route. A pushchair manages the tram line and the viewpoints; a wheelchair manages Portas do Sol by tram and the Pantheon by the São Vicente stop, and not the lanes.

The accessibility page lists what is level. Shoes with grip matter more than anything else here: the cobbles are polished and wet cobbles are ice.