Jerónimos Monastery, Lisbon: Manueline Masterpiece

The Jerónimos Monastery, often written Jeronimos Monastery in English, runs for the length of a city block along the Belém waterfront, a pale wall of carved limestone facing the River Tagus. King Manuel I founded it at the turn of the sixteenth century on the spot where Vasco da Gama kept vigil before sailing for India, and gave it to the monks of the Order of Saint Jerome. Its church holds the tombs of da Gama, the poet Luís de Camões and the kings of the House of Aviz, and its two-storey cloister is the most admired piece of Manueline carving in Portugal. On Day 2 of our Discover Portugal small group tour, the group explores Belém and visits the monastery, alongside the Tower of Belém.

Why Manuel I built a monastery at Belém

At the end of the fifteenth century Restelo, now part of Belém, was a small village and sheltered anchorage downstream from Lisbon. In 1459 Prince Henry the Navigator had an existing chapel here enlarged and handed it to the Order of Christ; it became known as Santa Maria de Belém. According to the monastery’s own history, Vasco da Gama and his men prayed and kept vigil in that chapel before the fleet left for India in July 1497, and Pedro Álvares Cabral sailed from the same shore for Brazil in 1500.

Manuel I, who reigned from 1495 to 1521, asked the Pope in 1495 for permission to found a house of Hieronymite monks on the chapel site and received it the following year. The foundation stone was laid on 6 January, the Feast of the Epiphany, in either 1501 or 1502; the sources disagree, and the monastery itself gives both. The date was chosen with care: the Three Kings travelling from distant lands made Belém, Portuguese for Bethlehem, a fitting new point of departure. The monks’ duties included praying for the king and hearing the confessions of sailors. The voyages are told in our guide to how Portugal mapped the known world.

Boitaca, Castilho and the making of the Manueline style

The monastery was built from lioz, a hard, pale local limestone full of fossils, quarried within a few kilometres of the site. Two master builders shaped it under Manuel I. Diogo Boitaca, probably French by origin, planned and directed the works from 1502 to 1516. He set out the church and much of the cloister and gave the decoration its royal vocabulary: the armillary sphere, which was Manuel’s personal emblem, the cross of the Order of Christ and the royal arms, wound about with foliage, fantastic creatures and twisted cords. This blend of late Gothic structure and exuberant carving is what later writers called the Manueline style, and Jerónimos is traditionally regarded as its high point.

From 1517 the Cantabrian architect João de Castilho took charge. He solved the hardest structural problems, including the church vault, sped up the works with several teams at once, and brought in Spanish Plateresque and early Renaissance ornament. In 1528 Castilho moved to the Convent of Christ at Tomar, and work at Belém slowed until Diogo de Torralva resumed it in 1540. After John III died in 1557, his widow, Queen Catherine, commissioned a new High Chapel in Estremoz marble from Jerónimo de Ruão, whose sober classical design breaks sharply with the rest of the church. By Ruão’s death in 1601 the monastery was essentially complete.

One detail is worth knowing before you go. The monastery’s historians point out that most of the overtly maritime ornament visible today, the ropes, fish, anchors and ships, belongs to the sections restored in the nineteenth century, when a Neo-Manueline revival deliberately played up the link with the voyages. The sixteenth-century carving leans more heavily on royal emblems, religious imagery and plant forms. For more on how the style spread across Lisbon, read our article on the Tower of Belém and its Manueline stonework, where Boitaca is recorded at work from 1514, before Francisco de Arruda.

The south portal and the west door

Most visitors first meet the monastery at the south portal, facing the river. Castilho carved it in 1517 and 1518, and it rises well above the roofline of the church like a stone altarpiece. At the summit stands Saint Michael; at the centre, Our Lady of Belém holding the Christ Child, surrounded by prophets, apostles and sibyls. The reliefs over the two doors show scenes from the life of Saint Jerome, and on the pillar between them stands Prince Henry the Navigator, honoured here because the monastery replaced his chapel.

The west door, now the main entrance to the church, is quieter and in some ways more important. It was made by the French sculptor Nicolau Chanterene in 1517 and is regarded as the first Renaissance work in Portugal. Above it are the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi. To one side Manuel I kneels in prayer with Saint Jerome; to the other, Queen Maria kneels with Saint John the Baptist. These are portraits of the founders, placed at the door of the church that would become their tomb.

Inside the church of Santa Maria de Belém

Step inside and the effect is of a stone forest. The church is a hall church: nave and side aisles rise to the same height under a single, wide ribbed vault carried on slender octagonal columns carved from base to capital. The monastery describes it as the only sixteenth-century European church to achieve complete uniformity within this type. The building came through the great earthquake of 1755 with relatively little damage.

Just inside the west door, beneath the upper choir, lie the two tombs most visitors come to see. Vasco da Gama is on the left and Luís de Camões, whose epic Os Lusíadas (1572) retold da Gama’s voyage, is on the right. Both remains were brought here in 1880 for the tercentenary of the poet’s death and placed in Neo-Manueline tombs by the sculptor António Augusto da Costa Motta, each topped by a recumbent effigy. Whether the remains in Camões’s tomb are really his is uncertain.

The royal pantheon lies further east. In the High Chapel, the tombs of Manuel I and Queen Maria face those of John III and Queen Catherine, each resting on carved marble elephants, a reminder of the Portuguese presence in India. In the transept chapels are the children of both kings, Cardinal-King Henry, and King Sebastian, who was killed at Alcácer Quibir in Morocco in 1578 and whose remains were brought to Belém in 1582. The church is still a parish church, so be discreet during services.

The cloister

The cloister is the part of the monastery people remember. It is square, but its inner corners are cut on the diagonal, giving an octagonal outline that runs through both storeys. Boitaca planned both levels but completed only the lower one; Castilho and Torralva finished the upper level in 1540 and 1541. The lower arcades are filled with tracery and carving of leaves, heraldry and grotesque figures, while the upper gallery is lighter, with a Renaissance parapet of Roman-style medallions by Torralva. Walk the lower gallery slowly and look at the piers rather than the arches: the closer you stand, the stranger and more inventive the carving becomes.

Several rooms open off the galleries. In the north wing of the ground floor is the tomb of Fernando Pessoa, the modernist poet, moved here from the Prazeres Cemetery in 1985 on the fiftieth anniversary of his death; the column-like monument by Lagoa Henriques carries lines from his heteronyms. The former refectory is lined with an eighteenth-century tiled dado showing the life of Joseph in Egypt, and the chapter house holds the tomb of the historian Alexandre Herculano.

From monastery to national symbol

The Hieronymites left when Portugal dissolved its religious orders in December 1833. From 1834 to 1940 the buildings housed Casa Pia, a charitable institution for orphans and the poor. In the nineteenth century the long dormitory wing was rebuilt in Neo-Manueline style, a project marred in 1878 when the central section collapsed during construction and killed ten workers. Today that wing holds the National Museum of Archaeology, while the Maritime Museum occupies the western end. The monastery was declared a National Monument in 1907 and, with the Tower of Belém, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. It remains a stage for the Portuguese state: the Treaty of Lisbon, which reshaped the European Union, was signed here on 13 December 2007.

Is the Jerónimos Monastery worth visiting?

Yes: if you see one building in Lisbon from the inside, this should be a strong candidate. Nothing else in the city brings together royal patronage, the voyages and a distinctively Portuguese style of architecture in one place, and the cloister has few equals anywhere in Europe.

How do you avoid the queues at the Jerónimos Monastery?

Buy a ticket for the cloister online, in advance, for a set date and time. At the time of writing the official site warns that tickets often sell out and that monastery tickets cannot be bought online on the day itself; the ticket office, a kiosk opposite the monument, closes at 4.30 pm. The cloister is open Tuesday to Sunday and closed on Mondays and some public holidays; the church keeps shorter hours and opens only in the afternoon on Sundays and religious holidays. The monastery can also close for state occasions or in bad weather, so check the official site before you go.

How long do you need at the Jerónimos Monastery?

Allow about an hour for the cloister and church together. There are no audio guides, so it helps to read up beforehand or go with a guide. The Maritime Museum and the National Museum of Archaeology occupy other parts of the building and need separate time.

How much walking does a visit involve?

Less than most Lisbon sightseeing, because Belém sits on flat ground by the river. According to the monastery, the church and the ground floor of the cloister are fully accessible, while the upper gallery is reached by a staircase and is not wheelchair accessible; wheelchairs and portable seats are available. The Tower of Belém is about a kilometre west along the riverfront, on mostly level paths, crossing the road and railway by underpass.

The Jerónimos Monastery on Day 2 of Discover Portugal

On the tour, the monastery falls on a full day in Belém and the old city. The group begins with a special visit to the Fábrica dos Pastéis de Belém, which has been baking Portugal’s custard tarts since 1837; our guide to Portuguese food and pastries explains the tradition. From there the day moves on to the Jerónimos Monastery and the Tower of Belém, and to a view of the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, the Monument to the Discoveries, on the riverbank. The group then strolls through the cobbled streets of Alfama, takes in the viewpoints at Santa Luzia and Portas do Sol, and ends near São Jorge Castle, seen from outside. An Odyssey Program Leader travels with the group throughout.

Be ready for a contrast in terrain. Belém is level, but Alfama is hilly, with steep lanes, steps and worn cobbles. The tour is rated Level 2, Moderate: three to five hours of physical activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to 8 kilometres on uneven ground. For sights to add on Day 4, a free day in Lisbon, see our selection of things to do in Lisbon, and for planning the wider country, our Portugal travel guide.

The Manueline thread runs on through the itinerary. On Day 10 the group visits the Monastery of Batalha, built in the Gothic and Manueline styles, and on Day 11 the Convent of Christ at Tomar, where João de Castilho went to work after leaving Belém. To follow it from Lisbon to Porto with a small group of up to 16 travellers, see the full itinerary of Discover Portugal.