Four days in Lisbon: the sunniest capital in Europe, and most of it uphill

Begun in 1147, the year Lisbon was taken from the Moors, and patched back together after every earthquake since. Romanesque at the front, Gothic and Baroque further in. The excavations under the cloister have Phoenician and Roman layers in them.

Five minutes uphill along the tram tracks. A tiled terrace looking out over the Alfama rooftops to the river, and the view most people picture when they picture Lisbon.

People have lived on this hill since the 8th century BCE and fortified it since the 1st, through Phoenicians, Romans, Visigoths and Moors before the Portuguese took it. The castle you walk around is largely a reconstruction, but the ramparts give you the whole city at once, and late afternoon is when to be up there.

Walk down rather than taking the tram, and eat one street off Rua Augusta rather than on it.

The high point of Manueline architecture, funded by the spice trade and built through the 16th century. The cloister is the reason to come, two storeys of stonework carved with ropes, corals and navigational instruments. Vasco da Gama is buried in the church, which is free to enter.

The original Belém bakery is a few doors along and always has a queue at the door. Ignore it and go inside, where there are several rooms of tables and a much shorter counter queue. Cinnamon on top, not sugar.

Across the road and on the water, a stone prow crowded with the figures of the men who sailed out of this bay. The lift to the top is worth the few euros for the view down onto the compass rose laid into the square below.

The cafés along the riverside path are unremarkable and fine. The better cooking is inland, in the streets behind the monastery.

A ten minute walk west along the river. Built in the early 1500s to guard the harbour mouth, and said to be the last of Portugal that departing crews saw and the first they picked out coming home. Inside it is small and the stairs are a single narrow spiral, so entry is metered and the wait can be long; the outside is arguably the better half.

About forty minutes. Go early: the hill is quiet first thing and busy by mid morning, and the difference is the whole character of the day.

A Romantic fantasy in yellow and red, thrown up in the 1840s on the ruins of a monastery by a king who liked pseudo-Moorish turrets and could afford all of them. The interiors are the royal apartments left much as they were in 1910. Tickets are timed and the terraces are where the crowd collects.

Along the ridge from Pena on foot. Walls the Moors began in the 10th century, running along the crest with nothing but air and forest below them. Less to see inside than Pena and a far better view of it, plus most of the coast on a clear day.

Come back down before eating. There is very little on the hill and it knows it.

An estate bought in 1697 and rebuilt at the end of the 19th century by an owner with money and an interest in secret societies. The grounds are the point: grottoes, tunnels and an initiation well you walk down in a spiral, nine turns to the bottom.

The convent church whose roof came down in the earthquake, on a morning when it was full for All Saints' Day. It was never rebuilt. The Gothic arches stand open to the sky and the nave is a lawn of stone with an archaeological museum at the far end.

A bica standing at the counter costs a fraction of what the same cup costs at a table outside, which is the arrangement in every café in Portugal.

Ten minutes north, at the top of the Glória funicular. A terraced garden along the edge of Bairro Alto with the castle directly opposite across the valley, which makes it the mirror image of the first afternoon and a good last look.