Is Penha de França a good area to stay in Lisbon?

Penha de França is the parish above and east of São Vicente, running up from the Alfama's back edge to the Alto da Eira. Most of it was built between the wars, and it is where a lot of the flats advertised as "Graça" actually are - the boundary runs between them and the difference is about eighty vertical metres.

What it gets you is price and view. The Miradouro da Senhora do Monte and the Graça terraces sit on this ridge, tram 28 runs along the western edge, and the Baixa is twenty-five minutes down. A flat here costs meaningfully less than the same flat in Alfama, and the streets are ordinary residential Lisbon rather than a queue.

The two problems are the hill and the isolation. There is no metro in the parish, the walk back from dinner is a genuine climb whichever way you take it, and past the ridge the district turns into 1970s social housing towers with nothing for a visitor. Book the western slope near Graça; anything advertised as Penha de França proper is further out and further up than the photographs suggest.