Estádio da Luz and the Benfica Museum: stadium tour, museum or both, and what the bundles add

Luz means light, but the home of Benfica is not named after its floodlights. It takes its name from the part of Lisbon it stands in, and that takes its name from a sixteenth-century church a short walk away, dedicated to Our Lady of Light. The club itself was founded in 1904 on the other side of the city, in Belém, and moved from ground to ground for half a century before it opened a stadium of its own here on 1 December 1954.

That first Estádio da Luz grew until it held about 120,000 people, which made it one of the largest stadiums in Europe. It was pulled down in stages, and the present one was built on the same site and opened on 25 October 2003, in time for the European Championship of 2004. Portugal lost the final here to Greece. The Champions League final was played here in 2014 and again in 2020, the second time to empty stands. On any day without a match you can walk in, and the first thing to settle is which of two visits you want.

Two visits, two doors

• The stadium tour: the building itself, from the stands down to the grass.
• The Benfica Museum, named after Cosme Damião, one of the founders. It opened in 2013 in a building of its own beside the stadium.

Each has its own ticket, and there is a combined one. Outside, free to see, are the bronze statue of Eusébio, where supporters leave scarves, and the club shop.

The statue of Eusébio outside the stadium, free to see. Photo: Erik Cleves Kristensen, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

The stadium tour

The tour is not led by a guide from start to finish. As our partner's listing describes it, you swap your voucher at Gate 17 and follow a marked route at your own pace, with staff posted at some of the stops to explain and answer questions. The stops listed are:

• scale models of the stadium and of the club's training campus;
• a stand and one of the lounges;
• the visitors' dressing room (the listing does not name the home one);
• the press conference room;
• a hall of fame, with a virtual reality film;
• the players' tunnel and the edge of the pitch;
• the eagles.

The eagles are real. Before home matches one of them is released to fly around the bowl and land on the club's crest, and the birds are kept at the stadium. The route ends in the shop. Allow about an hour.

What you remember is the bowl: some 65,000 red seats in tiers under a roof that hangs from four steel arches.

The view from pitch level, the last stop of the stadium tour. Photo: Threeohsix, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The museum

The museum has 29 themed areas on three floors. It covers every sport the club plays, not only football, and it sets the club's story beside that of Lisbon and Portugal in the same years. The best rooms are about the early 1960s, when Benfica, coached by the Hungarian Béla Guttmann, won the European Cup in 1961 and 1962, the second time against Real Madrid.

The player of those years was Eusébio. Born in Mozambique in 1942, he joined the club at eighteen, won the Ballon d'Or in 1965 and was top scorer at the World Cup of 1966 with nine goals. He died in 2014 and now lies in the National Pantheon. The museum also has screens, a simulator and a penalty shoot-out game, which is where children spend their time. Allow an hour to an hour and a half.

The European Cups of 1961 and 1962 in the museum. Photo: Threeohsix, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Stadium, museum or both

• You have one hour, or only one of you follows football: the stadium tour. The building impresses people who do not care about the club.
• You are a supporter, of Benfica or of the game: both. Together they take about two and a half hours.
• You are with small children: the tour for the pitch and the eagles. Add the museum only if they like the games.
• It is raining: the museum is fully indoors. Most of the tour is under cover, but the pitchside is open.

What the bundles add

Our partner lists six tickets. Under the names there are only three visits: the stadium, the museum, and the two together. The rest is extras.

• Scarf offer. A club scarf handed over with your ticket. It comes with the stadium ticket, the museum ticket and most of the combined ones.
• Wine tasting. The combined ticket, a scarf, and a tasting at a bar in the stadium's shopping area.
• Snack. The combined ticket, a scarf and a snack. The listing does not say what the snack is.
• Meal. The combined ticket with a voucher towards a meal at the stadium's restaurant. It is a voucher of a fixed value, not a set menu, the restaurant must be reserved, and no scarf is listed.

The visit is the same in all of them. Choose the plain combined ticket unless you would have bought the extra anyway. Transport is not included in any.

These are the stadium and museum tickets our partner sells, with today's prices:

• on WeGoTrip Museum & Attraction Tickets Estádio da Luz & Benfica Museum: Entry Ticket + Scarf Offer 4.6 (140) Book on WeGoTripfrom11,115 Ft
• on WeGoTrip Museum & Attraction Tickets Estádio da Luz & Benfica Museum: Entry Ticket + Wine Tasting + Scarf Offer Book on WeGoTripfrom24,708 Ft
• on WeGoTrip Museum & Attraction Tickets Estádio da Luz & Benfica Museum: Entry Ticket + Snack + Scarf Offer Book on WeGoTripfrom24,708 Ft
• on WeGoTrip Museum & Attraction Tickets Estádio da Luz: Entry Ticket + Scarf Offer 4.9 (21) Book on WeGoTripfrom9,057 Ft
• on WeGoTrip Museum & Attraction Tickets Benfica Museum: Entry Ticket + Scarf Offer 4.6 (13) Book on WeGoTripfrom6,172 Ft
• on WeGoTrip Museum & Attraction Tickets Estádio da Luz & Benfica Museum: Entry Ticket + Meal Book on WeGoTripfrom37,064 Ft

Sold and delivered by WeGoTrip. You book on their site at their price; Viaqui may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.

Getting there by metro

The blue line of the Lisbon metro runs from the centre (Baixa-Chiado, Restauradores, Marquês de Pombal) straight to the stadium in about a quarter of an hour, with no change. Two stations serve it: Alto dos Moinhos, and one stop further Colégio Militar/Luz, which opens into the Colombo shopping centre. From either it is a walk of five to ten minutes. Gate 17, where vouchers are exchanged, is signed on the outside of the stadium.

Match days

A stadium in use is not a museum. On the day of a home match the tour has been cut short or closed, and areas such as the dressing rooms and the pitchside can be out of bounds from the day before a European game. The listing does not spell out the rule. So look at the club's fixture list before you choose a date, and keep away from match days and the days around big games.

If what you want is to see a match, that is a different purchase: match tickets are sold by the club and are not part of any ticket described here.

From here

Colombo, across the road, is one of the largest shopping centres in the country and the easy place to eat. Three stops back towards the centre on the same line is Jardim Zoológico, for the Lisbon Zoo. In the other direction, ten minutes on foot, is the old village of Carnide and the church of Our Lady of Light that gave the stadium its name. See what else there is in Lisbon, or open the trip planner for Portugal.

Cover photo: Alvesgaspar, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.