Jerónimos Monastery

The Jerónimos Monastery is the building that best sums up Portugal's age of maritime expansion. King Manuel I commissioned it at the start of the sixteenth century, and construction began in 1501 to plans by Diogo de Boitaca, with Juan de Castillo taking over the works from around 1517. The money came largely from the spice trade, and the monks of the Order of Saint Jerome who lived here were charged with praying for the king and for sailors leaving from the nearby river beach. In 1983 the monastery and Belém Tower were listed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The architecture is the clearest example of the Manueline style, a late Gothic idiom with a maritime flavour. Look for twisted stone ropes, armillary spheres, coral-like pinnacles and royal emblems carved across the long south portal and around the doorways. The two-storey cloister is the highlight: its arcades are covered in intricate carving, and the light changes noticeably over the course of the day.

Inside the Church of Santa Maria, the soaring nave is held up by slender columns that branch into a ribbed vault. Near the entrance lie the tombs of the navigator Vasco da Gama and the poet Luís de Camões, author of The Lusiads, and the chancel holds royal tombs including those of Manuel I and John III. The poet Fernando Pessoa was reburied in the cloister in the twentieth century.

The church and the cloister have separate entrances. The ticketed part is the cloister, and the queue for it can be long by late morning, especially in summer and at weekends. Buy a timed ticket from the official online ticket office, arrive close to opening time and allow about an hour and a half. Shoulders should be covered in the church, and visits may be restricted during services.

The monastery is a short ride west of the centre on tram 15E or a train on the Cascais line to Belém. Everything here is walkable: Belém Tower, the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, MAAT and the National Coach Museum are all within a few minutes, and the gardens of Praça do Império in front of the monastery make a pleasant place to rest between visits. It closes on Mondays, so plan a Belém day for another day of the week.