Half Day Tour
Schedule: 9 AM – 1 PM or 2:30 PM – 6:30 PM
While little remains of the former Alfama Old Jewish Quarter, our guide can bring the quarter’s history and culture back to life.
Along the way, we also see the memorial monument erected not long ago by Lisbon’s Jewish community and the monument nearby erected by the church. We note the architecture of the Rossio train station, then walk by the famous Ginja stand where locals purchase small glasses of cherry liqueur, first brewed in an ancient monastery.
It is time to visit the Ohel Jacob Synagogue and its museum. Here, you can see an impressive collection of Torahs, including one that is more than 500 years old. There is also a collection of books in different languages, such as Ladino, Russian, German, Poland, and Ivrit. It’s an opportunity to learn the history behind this small congregation.
In Baixa, we discuss life once in the Judaria Grande, bustling with activity from successful merchants near the harbor.
Despite the devastation that came with the forced conversion of 1497 and the natural disasters of 1755, this area still contains clues to its Jewish past, and we will discover Jewish customs still present in the community and architecture.
We finish with a walk along Praca Commercio and the waterfront to enjoy the beauty of this charming city and to see the riverside where Jewish refugees during WWII would have departed in masse for New York and South America.
Full Day Tour
Schedule: Start at 9 AM
The full-day tour includes all the inclusions on the Half-Day Tour and a city tour covering all the city’s major highlights. We will visit Bairro Alto, known for its beautiful architectural buildings with tile facades and ornate iron balconies. This is the second oldest neighborhood of Lisbon, which in the past was home to a small Jewish Quarter. We will stop for lunch here.
After lunch, our tour continues to the Belem quarter, located by the river with scenic views, where all the monuments are dedicated to the Portuguese explorations. Here, our Jewish tour will be about the relevance that the Portuguese Jews had throughout centuries until the Golden Age period of Portugal. So, prepare yourself to learn about the most outstanding achievement of all time, the Portuguese Empire dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries, and all the involvement of Portuguese Jews that have been crucial to this epic adventure.