Exploring Coimbra, a Small University City in Portugal

Coimbra fits into one day on foot, because the old city climbs a single hill above the Mondego and you can walk from the river to the university in 20 minutes. Book the Joanina Library slot before you go, though: the library admits 50 people every 20 minutes at a time printed on your ticket, and it is the one thing in Coimbra you cannot just turn up for.

After spending our first day in Portugal at the beautiful Quinta das Lágrimas, we set out to visit Coimbra the next morning. Lisa from LL World Tour had told me it was doable to visit most of Coimbra in a day, and that became the goal.

Walking into Coimbra from the river

Walk into Coimbra along the Mondego rather than through the traffic, because the riverside route is flat, green and lands you at the foot of the old town. We picked up a map of Coimbra (pronounced roughly “Kweem-bra”) at the hotel, but the centre is small enough, and the river is such an obvious reference point, that you will find your way without one.

From the hotel we turned left onto the Estrada das Lágrimas, took the first street on the right, and went under the busy road to the river through a tunnel covered in good graffiti. Then we crossed on the Ponte Pedonal Pedro e Inês, the footbridge named after the doomed royal couple whose story attaches to the Quinta das Lágrimas gardens.

The Parque Verde do Mondego on the far side is not really a park in the formal sense. It is a stretch of green along the water where people stroll and run and children play, and if you follow it towards the city it runs into the Parque Dr. Manuel Brasa. That park ends at the Ponte de Santa Clara, where you cross the road to a tourist information office. There is a second one on the other side of town at the Praça da República.

This is also where the old town starts. Signs point uphill towards the university, or you can stay low and work through the small car-free streets of the Baixa first. Either way you end up climbing, because everything in Coimbra is either at the bottom of the hill or at the top of it.

The University of Coimbra and the Joanina Library

The University of Coimbra is the reason most people come, and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site founded in 1290, which makes it one of the oldest universities still operating anywhere. It sits at the top of the hill on the Paço das Escolas, the old royal palace courtyard, and you buy a ticket for a route through it rather than for a single building.

The Biblioteca Joanina is the room in the photographs: three vaulted chambers of gilded Baroque woodwork, painted ceilings and about 60,000 books, finished in the 1720s under João V. It is kept at a stable temperature behind a thick door, and a colony of bats lives in it and eats the insects that would otherwise eat the books.

The university sells its visits as programmes, and these are the current prices.

Two rules matter more than the price. First, the time printed on your ticket is your entry time for the Joanina Library, and you will not be let in outside it, so plan the rest of the visit around that slot; entries are capped at 50 people every 20 minutes. Second, the free-visit ticket stays valid for two days, so you can split the palace, the museum and the library across a morning and an afternoon. The ticket kiosk on Rua Larga opens daily from 09:00 to 19:00, the Paço das Escolas stays open to 19:30, and the last library entry is at 19:00.

Climb the university tower if the day is clear, since it gives you the whole city, the river and the plain in one turn.

The Jardim Botânico

The Jardim Botânico is free, and it is the one thing in Coimbra worth an hour that costs nothing. We came from the Praça da República and went in on Avenida Dr. Júlio Henriques, though the garden has several entrances. It belongs to the university and was laid out in the 18th century on terraces below the aqueduct.

The first part did not look promising: formal, straight lanes, clipped edges. Then it opens into a section that behaves like a forest, with high trees and rope courses, ladders and zip lines strung between them for supervised climbing. It looked genuinely good fun, and it was firmly not for me, because the trees you are moving between are very tall and I have a bad head for heights.

The garden opens from 09:00 to 17:00 between 1 October and 31 March, and from 09:00 to 20:00 between 1 April and 30 September. The Estufa Grande, a wrought-iron glasshouse from 1859 and one of the oldest iron structures in Portugal, and the botanical museum are ticketed separately, and the university runs guided tours of both.

What else to see in a day in Coimbra

Four more sights fit around the university on a single day, and they are listed below in the order you meet them walking down the hill.

1. Sé Velha. The Old Cathedral is half church and half fortress, built in the 12th century when Coimbra was the capital of Portugal and the frontier with the Moorish south ran nearby. The cloister is what the small entrance fee buys you, and it is worth it.
2. Mosteiro de Santa Cruz. The monastery on Praça 8 de Maio holds the tombs of Portugal’s first two kings, Afonso Henriques and Sancho I, and the café next door, the Café Santa Cruz, is in a deconsecrated chapel.
3. Fado de Coimbra. Coimbra has its own fado, sung by men in the student’s black cape rather than the Lisbon style, and it is the one bookable evening thing in the city. Fado ao Centro, a fado house in the old town, runs a daily concert of about 50 minutes with an explanation of the tradition first, at €16 ($19, £14) for an adult and €45 ($52, £39) for a family ticket, sold on its own site.
4. Portugal dos Pequenitos. A park of scale models of Portuguese buildings on the Santa Clara side of the river, built in the 1940s. It opens from 10:00 to 19:00 between 1 March and 15 October and from 10:00 to 17:00 the rest of the year. Take children; take a certain frame of mind if you do not have any.

If you have a second day, Conímbriga is 16 km (9.9 mi) south and is the largest excavated Roman site in Portugal, with mosaic floors and a working fountain house.

Italian dinner

Eat by the water in the Parque Dr. Manuel Brasa if you are still in Coimbra at dinner time. The Italian place there is not a normal restaurant: the kitchen and the small bar sit in what amounts to a container, with a terrace beside the water and a smarter indoor area that seems to hang over it. That sounds either odd or overdesigned and it is neither. You walk up and take a seat.

My ex and I both had a good, decent-sized pizza, and I could not finish mine. We paid €28.80 (about $33, £25) in total for a starter salad, two pizzas, a caipirinha, a sparkling water and some tea, which was the going rate at the time.

Worth knowing: I almost always had tea after dinner in Portugal, and instead of one cup I got a small teapot good for about three.

And be aware of the couvert. When you sit down for a proper meal in Portugal, the table almost always gets olives, bread, sometimes tomatoes or another small dish, and these are not free. I knew that in advance, so we usually declined politely, but one night in Porto we were hungry enough to think what the heck and eat them. We paid about €6 for bread, three cherry tomatoes and some olives, which is the price of a meal. You can always say no, and it causes no offence. It only happens at sit-down meals, not when you stop for a sandwich.

Lunch and snacks

Eat lunch standing up in the Baixa, because that is where it costs almost nothing. We grabbed a quick bite at the square across from the Ponte de Santa Clara and paid €1.70 for a slice of pizza and €3.50 for a small Italian salad. I took the salad because I did not want to eat filling, junky food all trip, which is a thing I do. I should have had the pizza too: an hour later I was hungry again.

Luckily we were heading to a supermarket for snacks. There is a Minipreço just behind the train station. We paid €8.08 (about $9, £7) for half a litre of cola, two half-litre waters, half a litre of iced tea, four 33 cl beers, six packs of dinosaur biscuits, a big bag of crisps and two small cakes.

One note on that: we could not find a supermarket near the station at first, so we went to the tourist office, where they were very friendly and pointed us straight at it. Portuguese tourist offices are consistently good and consistently underused.

Practical information

Getting there

Take the train to Coimbra, because the station sits a five-minute walk from the tourist office and driving into this city is not worth the trouble. Coimbra is on the main Lisbon to Porto line, roughly halfway between the two, and there are two stations: long-distance trains stop at Coimbra-B on the edge of town, and a short shuttle runs from there to Coimbra-A in the centre. Check train routes and fares in Portugal before you fix your dates.

Parking in Coimbra looked like a nightmare. The streets are narrow, and every parked car we saw was either touching the ones in front and behind it or standing somewhere that was not obviously a parking space. Park on the far side of the river and walk in over the pedestrian bridge instead.

Buses do run to Coimbra, but Portuguese train fares are low enough that the more comfortable option is also the sensible one.

Staying there

Stay on the Santa Clara side of the river if you want quiet and a garden, and in the Baixa if you want to walk out of the door into the old town. We stayed at Quinta das Lágrimas, a 19th-century palace hotel with a garden, a heated indoor pool and a spa, within walking distance of the centre.

The gardens are the point. They hold the Fonte dos Amores, the spring tied to the story of Inês de Castro, murdered here in 1355 on the orders of Afonso IV, and later, according to the legend, crowned queen after her death by Pedro I. The footbridge you cross into town is named for the two of them. Check dates for Hotel Quinta das Lágrimas.

For guesthouses in the Baixa, student-district apartments and everything cheaper, run your dates through Booking.com for Portugal and filter on the map, because “Coimbra” covers both sides of the river and the walk between them matters.

Coimbra FAQ

Is one day in Coimbra enough? Yes, for the university, the Joanina Library, the Sé Velha and a walk through the Baixa. Two days lets you add the botanical garden properly, Conímbriga or a fado evening.

Do I need to book the Joanina Library in advance? In practice, yes. Entry is capped at 50 people every 20 minutes and your ticket carries a fixed time, so in summer the good slots go early in the day.

How much does a day in Coimbra cost? The university ticket with the library is €16.50 ($19, £14), the botanical garden is free, the cathedral cloister is a couple of euros, and lunch in the Baixa costs a few euros more. Coimbra is one of the cheaper cities in Portugal to spend a day in.

Is Coimbra hilly? Yes, and steeply so. The university is at the top and the Baixa is at the bottom, with stairs and steep lanes in between. There is a lift, the Elevador do Mercado, that takes some of the climb out of it.

What is Coimbra known for? Its university, founded in 1290 and one of the oldest in the world; the Joanina Library; and its own style of fado, sung by male students in black capes.

I hope this helps you plan your own day in Coimbra. Our trip to Portugal was made possible by Turismo Centro de Portugal. All opinions are my own.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 4 tips below come from a day walked across Coimbra and from the university’s own ticketing rules, which decide how the rest of the day has to be arranged.

1. Build the day around the Joanina Library slot, and use the second day on the ticket. Entries are capped at 50 people every 20 minutes, the time printed on the ticket is the only time you will be let in, and the last entry is at 19:00. The free-visit ticket stays valid for two days, so the palace and the science museum can wait until the following morning rather than being crammed around the slot.
2. Say no to the couvert unless you intend to pay for it. The bread, olives and tomatoes that arrive unasked at a sit-down meal are charged for. One hungry night in Porto we ate them and paid about €6 for bread, three cherry tomatoes and some olives, which is what a meal costs. Declining causes no offence, and it does not happen when you stop for a sandwich.
3. Give the Botanical Garden an hour, because it costs nothing. Entry is free, and the gates are open 09:00 to 17:00 from 1 October to 31 March and 09:00 to 20:00 from 1 April to 30 September. Only the Estufa Grande, the 1859 iron glasshouse, and the botanical museum are ticketed, so the walk through the formal beds and the wooded section behind them is free either way.
4. Arrive at Coimbra-B and leave the car across the river. Long-distance trains on the Lisbon to Porto line stop at Coimbra-B on the edge of town, with a short shuttle into Coimbra-A in the centre. If you do drive, park on the far side of the Mondego and walk in over the pedestrian bridge, because every parked car we saw in the old streets was either touching its neighbours or standing somewhere that was not a space.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes in this post come from her day in Coimbra, walked in from Quinta das Lágrimas along the Mondego. The team covers Coimbra and the rest of Portugal for independent travellers, including the university tickets, the hotels either side of the river and the trains worth taking, and updates this page when prices and opening hours change.