Top 8 things to do in Belem, ranked

Getting there, and the mistake almost everyone makes

Belem is six kilometres west of Baixa and there are four ways to reach it. The famous one, tram 15E from Praca da Figueira, takes 30 to 40 minutes and often means standing in a queue then standing on the tram. The smart one is the train from Cais do Sodre towards Cascais: seven minutes, about €1.55 with a rechargeable card, trains every ten to twenty minutes, and you arrive rested. Buses 728 and 714 also run the riverside. Cycling the flat riverside path from Cais do Sodre takes 25 minutes and is genuinely pleasant.

The other mistake is Monday. Jeronimos, the Torre, the Coach Museum and Ajuda all close on Mondays; MAAT closes Tuesdays. Sunday mornings bring free or reduced entry at state sites, which sounds like a saving until you see the line. The sweet spot is a Wednesday or Thursday arriving at 09:45 for opening, doing the two big monuments before 12:30, then spending the afternoon on the low-queue half of this list. Nearly everything sits within a 1.5 kilometre strip along the water, so you will walk rather than ride once you are here.

1. The Jeronimos cloister and 2. Torre de Belem

The Mosteiro dos Jeronimos cloister is the best single thing in Belem and one of the best in Portugal: two storeys of Manueline stone carved with ropes, artichokes, sea monsters and armillary spheres, built on the profits of the spice route. The cloister ticket runs around €12, the church next door is free and holds the tombs of Vasco da Gama and Camoes. Book a timed slot online the night before, arrive for the first entry, and give it an hour. Combined tickets with the Torre exist at a small saving if you plan to do both.

The Torre de Belem, a 16th-century river fort marooned at the water's edge, is more photogenic from outside than rewarding within: a spiral staircase controlled by a traffic light, small rooms, and a terrace with a good view. Entry is around €8. If the line is longer than forty minutes, look at it from the lawn, take the photograph and put the €8 towards lunch. If you do go up, go last thing in the afternoon when the coaches have moved on, and note the rhinoceros carved on a corner turret, from a beast shipped to Lisbon in 1515.

3. MAAT and Central Tejo, 4. Museu Nacional dos Coches

MAAT is the low white wave of a building on the riverbank you can walk over the top of for nothing; the exhibitions inside are contemporary and hit-or-miss, but the ticket also gets you into Central Tejo, the decommissioned coal power station next door, and that is the real draw. Boilers, gantries, control panels and the smell of old machinery, all preserved at industrial scale. Around €11 for both, closed Tuesdays. Ninety minutes. Walking the MAAT roof at sunset is free and gives you the bridge, the river and the Cristo Rei in one frame.

The Museu Nacional dos Coches holds the finest collection of state coaches on earth, and it is far better than that description sounds: gilded baroque carriages the size of small boats, including the papal ambassador vehicles of 1716, displayed in a stark modern hall that lets you walk around them. Around €8, closed Mondays, an hour is plenty. Children who are bored by monasteries tend to like this. The old riding school across the road, part of the same institution, holds the overflow in a royal hall and is included in some ticket combinations; ask at the desk.

5. Padrao dos Descobrimentos, 6. Palacio Nacional da Ajuda

The Padrao dos Descobrimentos, the concrete prow with Henry the Navigator at the front, dates from 1960 rather than 1460, which surprises people. The lift to the top costs around €10 and delivers the one view that shows you the Jeronimos cloister layout from above along with the marble compass rose set into the pavement below, a gift from South Africa in 1960 mapping Portuguese voyages. Fifteen minutes up top. Go if you like aerial geometry; skip it if you have already paid for a lift somewhere else that week.

Palacio Nacional da Ajuda is a stiff ten-minute uphill walk behind Belem and gets a fraction of the traffic, which is why it is on this list. A 19th-century royal palace left largely as the last residents used it, with an entire wing of state rooms, plus the Royal Treasure Museum in the new vault holding crown jewels and the enormous silver services. The palace runs about €8, the treasure vault about €12, and both together comfortably fill two hours. Take bus 760 back down rather than walking if your legs are done.

7. The gardens, and 8. the ferry to Porto Brandao

Jardim Botanico Tropical, entered from beside the Coach Museum, costs around €5 and is a shaded seven-hectare survivor of Portugal's colonial botany programme, full of palms, peacocks and ponds, and reliably empty at midday when the monastery lawn is a picnic scrum. The Praca do Imperio garden between Jeronimos and the river is free, formal and best appreciated from an upper window. The Jardim Vieira Portuense, the small terraced strip in front of the monastery, has the shade and the benches everyone is looking for and is somehow always half-empty.

The move nobody makes: walk to the ferry terminal by the Torre and take the boat across to Porto Brandao or Trafaria, ten minutes and roughly €1.55 each way with a card. Porto Brandao is a fishing hamlet under the cliffs with a handful of restaurants grilling sardines and dourada at €12 to €18, and a view straight back at Belem that no rooftop in Lisbon can sell you. Check the return timetable before you sit down; sailings thin out midday and after 20:00. It turns a monument crawl into an actual day out.

Eating in Belem without wasting an hour

Belem's lunch problem is that everything within sight of Jeronimos is priced for people who will never come back. Walk two blocks inland from the tram line and prices drop by a third: the streets behind Rua de Belem and around Rua Vieira Portuense hold small places doing a €10 to €13 lunch with soup, main and coffee. On the waterfront, the glass pavilion beside the Torre lawn is a decent spot for a €3 beer with a view rather than a meal. The Champalimaud centre further west has a smart riverside restaurant if you want a proper dinner.

On the custard tart question: yes, the queue outside the famous bakery on Rua de Belem is enormous, and yes, it moves quickly if you go inside to the sit-down rooms rather than joining the takeaway line, which most people never realise. Two tarts and a bica standing at the counter costs under €5. Go at 09:00 or after 19:00 and the whole thing takes four minutes. If the line has swallowed the pavement, there are competent bakeries all along Rua de Belem and you have lost nothing.

The half-day and full-day plans, and what to skip

Half a day, arriving 09:45: Jeronimos cloister on a pre-booked slot, church, tarts, then the Coach Museum, then the train back from Belem station at 14:00. Full day: add MAAT and Central Tejo after lunch, walk the roof at 17:00, ferry over to Porto Brandao for grilled fish at 19:30 and the last boat back. If you have children, swap the Coach Museum in and the Torre out, and add the Museu de Marinha, which has real royal barges and aircraft and costs around €7.

Skip the tuk-tuks touting at the Padrao for €40 to run you 900 metres along a flat pavement. Skip the Torre queue on a hot Sunday. Skip attempting Belem and Sintra on the same day, a plan that sounds efficient and delivers two rushed half-visits and a bad-tempered evening. And do not bother buying the multi-monument city pass unless you are also doing three or four state sites elsewhere in the same 72 hours; two Belem tickets bought separately come to around €20 and the pass rarely beats that on a short trip.