Getting Around Lisbon: Navegante Card, Tram 28 and Trains

Lisbon packs 545,796 residents into 100.05 km² laid over seven hills above the Tagus, and its transport network is the direct consequence of that gradient. The flat parts have a metro; the steep parts have trams, funiculars and staircases. Almost everything in it is priced twice, and the gap between the two prices is where visitors lose money.

This guide answers how the network works, not what to book. Our Lisbon overview of what to book and what to wander into covers the sights, every option we track sits on the Lisbon destination page, and the 4,284 experiences in the catalogue (median €85) appear below only where they explain something about slope.

Do you need a navegante card to get around Lisbon?

Yes, and it costs almost nothing. The navegante ocasional — the reusable contactless card still widely called Viva Viagem — sells for €0.50 at every Metro ticket machine and stays rechargeable for a year. It is not a pass — it is the plastic every Lisbon fare has to be loaded onto.

Three things can sit on the same card at once. A Carris/Metro single ticket costs €1.90 and is valid for one journey within an hour of first validation, with no two consecutive entries into the metro. Zapping is stored value, topped up in fixed steps from €3.00 to €40.00, and charges €1.72 for the same trip. A 24-hour Carris/Metro ticket costs €7.25. metrolisboa.pt publishes all three.

The card is personal: it cannot pass back over the gate for a second person, even when it holds several journeys. A couple needs two cards. Children under four ride the metro free with an adult when they do not take a seat.

Why does a Lisbon tram ticket cost more bought on board?

Because Carris charges a separate, higher tariff to anyone paying the driver. From 1 January 2026 the on-board fare is €2.30 on a bus and €3.30 on a tram, against €1.72 for the same ride on zapping. The tram premium is 1.92 times the card fare, charged per person, per boarding.

Run the arithmetic once and the card is obvious. The €0.50 card is repaid on the first tram journey, which saves €1.58. Tapping a contactless bank card at the metro gate is allowed but costs €1.92 a trip — €0.20 more than zapping — so the card repays itself after three journeys even against a bank card. The 24-hour ticket at €7.25 beats zapping only from the fifth trip of the day: four journeys cost €6.88, five cost €8.60. Figures from the 2026 tables at carris.pt and metrolisboa.pt.

Is tram 28 a tourist attraction or a public bus route?

It is a scheduled Carris service that happens to run through the prettiest hill in the city. Line 28E climbs from Martim Moniz through Graça and Alfama, crosses Baixa and ends beyond Estrela, in 1930s Remodelado cars narrow enough to scrape the walls.

Treat it as transport and it works. Board at a mid-route stop rather than either terminus, where the queue regularly outlasts the ride; go before nine in the morning or after eight in the evening; and pay with the card, because the driver's fare is €3.30 and the aisle is too crowded to reach him anyway. Line 12E covers the Alfama loop when 28E is impassable, and 15E — modern articulated cars — runs the flat riverside to Belém.

What are Lisbon's ascensores, and what do they charge?

They are public transport, not rides. An ascensor is a funicular or lift run by Carris up a slope too steep to walk comfortably — Glória from Restauradores to Bairro Alto, Bica from the riverside to Chiado, Lavra from Anunciada, and the vertical Elevador de Santa Justa linking Baixa to Largo do Carmo.

Their pricing is unlike the rest of the network. The 2026 on-board fare is €4.30 for the funiculars and €6.20 for Santa Justa, each covering up to two trips rather than one — a return priced above a whole day of metro and bus travel. The walk-around exists too: the top platform of Santa Justa is reachable on foot and free from Largo do Carmo, which is why the queue at the bottom is the more expensive way to arrive.

How does the Lisbon Metro work, and where does it not go?

Metropolitano de Lisboa runs four lines and 56 stations across 44.5 km, every day from 06:30 until 01:00, counted from each terminus. Lines are named by colour, and the signage uses it: blue Reboleira–Santa Apolónia, yellow Odivelas–Rato, green Telheiras–Cais do Sodré, red Aeroporto–São Sebastião.

What matters more is the gap. The metro serves the flat, modern and northern city — the airport, the business avenues, Oriente, the river stations — and misses the two neighbourhoods most visitors walk through. There is no metro station in Alfama and none in Bairro Alto: tunnelling under a medieval hillside of unreinforced buildings was never realistic. Baixa-Chiado, the interchange between blue and green, comes closest, and its own escalator shaft is effectively a funicular built into the station.

Lisbon's transport map is a contour map in disguise. The metro follows the flat ground, the trams take the slopes, and the funiculars exist exactly where neither could.

Iracema Melo, on reading the Lisbon network

How do you get from Lisbon Airport into the city centre?

You take the red line, from a station inside the terminal. Humberto Delgado Airport sits roughly seven kilometres from Baixa, and Aeroporto is the red line's northern terminus — a walk from arrivals, not a shuttle ride. Reaching Baixa-Chiado means one change, at Alameda or São Sebastião, and about half an hour.

The alternatives are ordinary. Carris buses 744 and 783 leave the terminal forecourt for the centre without a change, slower and subject to traffic, at the same €1.72 zapping fare, and taxis rank outside arrivals on the meter. Buy the card at the airport machine before anything else — the first fare of a trip is the one most often overpaid. lisbonairport.pt lists the access options.

How do you take the train to Sintra and Cascais?

From two city stations, on two lines, for the same price. CP – Comboios de Portugal runs the suburban network, and both day trips are ordinary commuter journeys: Sintra from Rossio in about 40 minutes, Cascais from Cais do Sodré along the estuary in a little over half an hour.

The 2026 fares run by zone, from €1.50 for one zone to €3.90 for eight, but the two runs that matter are sold as named returns: €5.10 return to Sintra and €5.10 return to Cascais. A CP tourist card covers unlimited suburban travel for €6.70 over 24 hours or €14.40 over 72, and a Train & Bus ticket at €14.00 adds the Scotturb 434 and 435 buses that climb from Sintra station to the palaces. Zapping works on CP at €2.05 a journey. cp.pt publishes all of it.

Two practical notes. Sintra trains also leave from Oriente and Entrecampos; and the Cascais line stops at Belém a few minutes out of Cais do Sodré, which makes the monument quarter a train ride rather than a tram queue. Where those trains end, our Sintra destination page and Cascais destination page pick the day up, and the rest of the country sits on our Portugal country page.

Six Lisbon journeys compared: mode, ticket and time

Times below are typical scheduled journeys, and the tram figures vary most because trams share the street with traffic. The ticket column is the point of the table: five of these six journeys need nothing but the navegante card in your pocket, and the sixth is a return sold at a fixed price.

Why is walking in Lisbon an exercise in altimetry?

Because distance on the map is never distance in the legs. Baixa lies at sea level and Castelo de São Jorge stands about a hundred metres above it, a few hundred metres away horizontally. Every route out of the flat grid is a climb, and the network's oddities — funiculars, a vertical lift, narrow trams — answer that one fact.

Two surfaces make it harder. Calçada portuguesa, the hand-laid limestone mosaic that paves most of the historic centre, polishes to a shine underfoot and turns slippery in rain; and many connections between levels are staircases, not ramps, which rules out wheeled luggage. The working rule is to ride up and walk down: tram, metro or taxi to the top of a hill, then descend through Alfama, Graça or Bairro Alto on foot.

What the Lisbon tour catalogue reveals about slope and distance

Priced against the clock, the catalogue we track measures gradient rather than kilometres. The three tuk-tuk tours among the ten most-reviewed Lisbon products cost €22.50, €28.33 and €14.00 per hour — €90.00 for 4 hours, €85.00 for 3 and €14.00 for 1 — and none of them leaves the city.

The coaches that do leave are cheaper by the hour. The Sintra and Cascais days run €7.38, €8.75 and €8.00 per hour; the runs that cross the country to Fátima, Nazaré and Óbidos work out at €7.22 and €9.17 per hour. A vehicle that never leaves Lisbon costs two to four times per hour what a vehicle crossing Portugal costs. Motorway kilometres are cheap; a driver threading a three-wheeler up Alfama's stairs and one-way alleys is not. That is the price of slope, stated in euros.

Two further readings. Not one of the ten most-reviewed Lisbon experiences we track is an airport transfer — when the red line ends inside the terminal, the transfer market has nothing to sell. And the cheapest guided Sintra day we track, at €59.00, is 11.6 times the €5.10 CP return to the same station: the gap buys palace entries, a fixed schedule and someone else's driving, not transport. Since 100% of the catalogue cancels free, a weather-dependent hill day stays reversible right up to the morning.

Do taxis and ride apps make sense in Lisbon?

For hills, for luggage and for late nights, yes — the city is small enough that metered rides stay short. Lisbon taxis are the cream cars with green roofs, ranked at stations, squares and the airport, running on a meter rather than a negotiated price. Ride-hailing apps operate legally alongside them and quote up front.

The meter is mid-reform, which is worth knowing before arguing about a fare. Portuguese taxi tariffs are set nationally, not by the city, and the long-standing model charges a flag-fall plus distance, with a higher night, weekend and holiday tariff and a luggage supplement. The Autoridade da Mobilidade e dos Transportes has published a replacement built on distance and time — a €2.00 flag-fall, €0.73 per kilometre and €0.34 per minute, luggage supplement abolished — but its entry into force was tied to separate ride-hailing legislation and deferred. Check amt-autoridade.pt for the regime in force.

Viva Viagem

The original name of the reusable contactless card, now branded navegante ocasional and still called Viva Viagem by most visitors and some machines. Costs €0.50, reloadable for one year, and cannot be shared between two people on the same journey.

zapping

Stored-value mode on that card, topped up in fixed steps from €3.00 to €40.00 and accepted by Carris, Metro, CP, Transtejo and the wider metropolitan operators. Charges €1.72 per metro, bus or tram journey and €2.05 on CP.

elétrico

Tram, in Portuguese. Carris runs both the historic Remodelado cars on lines such as 28E and 12E and modern articulated units on 15E to Belém. The on-board fare is €3.30; the card fare is €1.72.

ascensor

A funicular or lift operated as public transport by Carris — Glória, Bica, Lavra, Graça and the vertical Elevador de Santa Justa. The 2026 on-board tariff is €4.30 for a funicular and €6.20 for Santa Justa, each covering up to two trips.

comboio

Train. CP – Comboios de Portugal runs the suburban lines out of Rossio to Sintra and out of Cais do Sodré along the estuary to Belém, Estoril and Cascais, priced by zone and accepting the same card.

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