There is a version of Alfama that only exists before about eight in the morning, and it is the one worth setting an alarm for. The tour groups are still at breakfast. The tram lines are quiet. What is left is the neighborhood doing what it has done for centuries: opening shutters, sweeping steps, feeding cats that answer to no one.
Walk in without a destination. The lanes here were laid out before maps mattered, and they still resist being followed. Let one open into another. A staircase you didn't plan becomes a courtyard; a courtyard becomes a view you couldn't have found on purpose.
The reward for going early isn't a checklist of sights. It's the ten minutes when the district belongs to the people who live in it, and you are quietly allowed to borrow it.