The Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, a national monument and UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983
Commissioned and built under Manuel I, shortly after Vasco da Gama returned from his first voyage. The construction was financed by the rich income from overseas trade. In 1544, after 42 years of construction, the monastery was completed and housed the Order of St Jerome, whose name it still bears today, until 1834. As the pantheon of the Aviz-Beja dynasty, the church was opened in the 19th century for the graves of heroes and poets: Vasco da Gama and Luís de Camões. It is considered the most important surviving building in the Manueline style.
If you want to visit the church, you have to be patient, as there is a huge queue of tourists waiting to get in. Admission is free. To visit the cloister, you have to buy tickets at the kiosk in the park opposite. We were in the cloister - without a queue.
The church
And this is what it looks like in the church (picture from Wikipedia)
The picture can be enlarged by clicking on it
Padrão dos Descobrimentos
The Monument to the Discoveries was erected by the Salazar regime in 1960 to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Henry the Navigator. It is 56 metres high. If you want, you can take a lift to the top for a fee, but you still have to climb a flight of stairs to the viewpoint at the top.
On the floor in front of the entrance is a wind rose made of mosaic stones. The compass rose has a diameter of 50 metres and was a gift from the Republic of South Africa. A world map in the centre of the mosaic shows the routes taken by Portuguese explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Torre de Belém
The Belém Tower was built on a small island in 1515 to defend the harbour. It survived the great earthquake almost unscathed and is now the city's landmark. Under the lower western corner tower you can recognise the sculpture of a rhinoceros head. This is said to have provided the model for Albrecht Dürer's famous woodcut ‘Rhinocerus’.
