Frequently asked questions

There's no meeting point with us — we are your booking concierge, not an on-site tour. Bring the QR ticket we email you to the visitor centre at the site entrance on Rua Professor Vergílio Correia in Condeixa-a-Velha. Staff scan your QR at the desk and you walk straight through to the ruins and museum. The ticket office closes at 17:15, so arrive before then.

Yes. A single admission covers the entire excavated Roman city — the forum, the bath-houses, the great houses with their mosaics, the streets and the late-Roman walls — and the Monographic Museum of Conímbriga at the entrance. There is no separate ticket for the museum; it's all one visit.

Only for the youth (13–24) and senior (65+) reduced tickets — bring a passport or government ID showing your age. The standard adult ticket does not require ID. Children under 13 enter free of charge and do not need a ticket booked through us.

The Casa dos Repuxos — the House of the Fountains, or 'water jets' — is a 2nd-century Roman townhouse built around a central garden whose pools and playing fountains have been restored to run again. Its floors carry some of the best-preserved polychrome mosaics in the Iberian Peninsula: hunting scenes, the four seasons, mythological figures and intricate geometric borders. It is the single most famous thing at Conímbriga and, for most visitors, the reason to come.

The Casa de Cantaber is one of the largest private houses known in the entire western Roman Empire — a sprawling domus with its own private bath suite, multiple courtyards and reception rooms. It is named after Cantaber, a resident recorded by the historian Hydatius as having been captured with his family when the Suebi sacked the town in the 460s. Walking it gives you the scale of how a wealthy Roman-Lusitanian family actually lived.

As the Roman Empire weakened in the late 3rd century, the people of Conímbriga built a massive new defensive wall in a hurry — and drove it straight through existing houses, streets and monuments, demolishing part of their own city and reusing the stone. It's one of the most vivid things at the site: you can see the wall cut across earlier Roman buildings. It delayed disaster but didn't prevent it — the Suebi sacked the town between 465 and 468.

No. Conímbriga has been classified a Portuguese National Monument since 1910 and is on Portugal's UNESCO 'tentative list' of candidate sites, but it is not (yet) an inscribed World Heritage Site. It is, however, the most extensively excavated and best-preserved Roman town in the country.

Two to three hours is right for most people. The excavated city — forum, baths, streets, the great houses and the late-Roman wall — takes 90 minutes to two hours at a steady pace, and the Monographic Museum adds another 30–45 minutes. Photographers and history readers can easily spend longer among the mosaics.

The first hour after opening at 10:00, or the last two hours before the ticket office closes at 17:15. The site is open-air and mostly unshaded, so those windows are both the quietest and the coolest. Midday in summer is the hottest and the busiest, when the Casa dos Repuxos — which is small and roofed — can fill with groups.

Yes. Children under 13 enter free of charge and do not need a ticket booked through us — just bring them along. The ruins are a genuinely good place for kids: open space to explore, the running fountains, the mosaics and the dramatic story of the wall built through the town.

Yes, for personal use. The mosaics of the Casa dos Repuxos and the restored water garden are the star subjects, and the whole open site photographs beautifully in low morning or late-afternoon light. Tripods and commercial photography may require an advance permit from the operator — ask us if you need one.

There is very little shade — Conímbriga sits on an exposed plateau. In summer bring a hat, sunscreen, sunglasses and water; central-Portugal afternoons reach the mid-30s °C. In winter and after rain the Roman paving can be slick, so bring closed, grippy shoes year-round. There is a café and shop at the visitor centre.

It's 16 km south-west of Coimbra, about 15–20 minutes by car on the IC2 / N1 with free parking at the entrance. Without a car, the Transdev 'Conímbriga' bus runs from Coimbra via Condeixa-a-Nova directly to the ruins on visiting days; alternatively take any Coimbra–Condeixa bus and cover the last 2 km by local taxi. We send route notes with every booking.

Yes. From Lisbon it's about 2 hours by car on the A1 (exit Condeixa); from Porto about 1h30. Many international visitors instead base in Coimbra — on the main Lisbon–Porto rail line — and combine Conímbriga with the University of Coimbra and its Joanina Library, which are 16 km away. That pairing makes the most rewarding single day in the region.

Partly. The visitor centre, museum and the approach to the forum are level and firm; but much of the excavated city is original Roman paving, gravel and low steps that are uneven underfoot, and the Casa dos Repuxos is entered on raised walkways. Email us before your visit and we'll send the operator's accessibility notes and the flattest suggested route.

The site and museum are open daily 10:00–18:00 (last tickets 17:15). They close on 1 January, Easter Sunday, 1 May, 24 July, and 24–25 December. We won't issue a ticket for a closed date; if you pick one by mistake we'll flag it and rebook.

Email us at least 48 hours before your booked date and we'll rebook to any open date in the operator's calendar at no charge. Because Conímbriga is dated entry rather than a fixed time slot, date changes are usually straightforward. Inside 48 hours we'll do our best but can't always guarantee it.

Tickets are issued for a specific date and are non-transferable once issued. All sales are final. If your plans change, reply to your confirmation email at least 48 hours before your date and we'll rebook your visit to any open date in the operator's calendar. The only refund cases are operator-side failures such as an unscheduled closure.

The price you see includes our concierge service — booking on your behalf, support in your language, route and timing guidance, and re-sending your ticket before you travel. If you would rather buy the bare admission yourself, it is available on the official operator's website; our value is the service around it, not a marked-up ticket alone.

Conímbriga is one of the largest and the most thoroughly excavated Roman town in Portugal, near the village of Condeixa-a-Velha, about 16 kilometres south-west of Coimbra. Occupied since the 9th century BCE and raised to a Roman municipium by the emperor Vespasian between AD 69 and 79, it grew into a walled town of perhaps 10,000 people, with a forum, public baths fed by an aqueduct, an amphitheatre and grand private houses. Its floor mosaics — above all in the Casa dos Repuxos — are among the finest in the Iberian Peninsula. Sacked by the Suebi in the 460s and never rebuilt over, it has survived as an unusually complete Roman townscape, visited today with its on-site Monographic Museum on a single ticket.

No fixed time slot. Your ticket is dated entry, valid throughout opening hours (10:00–18:00, last tickets 17:15) on the day you choose, so you can arrive whenever suits your itinerary. We pre-buy your ticket from the official system, so on arrival you show the QR at the visitor-centre desk and go straight in. Staff scan the code on your phone — no printing needed.