Jerónimos Monastery (Mosteiro dos Jerónimos)

The Jerónimos Monastery stands in Belém, on the western side of Lisbon near the River Tagus, close to the old port of Restelo from which Portuguese ships set out on voyages of discovery. King Manuel I ordered it in 1495 as a burial place for his dynasty, and construction began on 6 January 1501. Work went on for about a century, paid for largely by a tax on Portugal's trade with Africa and Asia.

The monastery was given to the Order of Saint Jerome, whose monks prayed for the king's soul and offered spiritual help to sailors. Vasco da Gama and his men had prayed in an earlier chapel on the site before sailing to India in 1497. The building came through the 1755 Lisbon earthquake with little damage. Religious orders were dissolved in Portugal in 1833, and the monks left; restoration and additions followed later in the 19th century.

The monastery is the finest example of the Manueline style, a late Gothic Portuguese style rich in carved ropes, shells, plants and armillary spheres that reflect the age of sea voyages. Diogo de Boitaca began the work, and João de Castilho later added Renaissance and Plateresque detail, including the elaborate south portal. The Church of Santa Maria has slender columns rising like palm trees to a wide vaulted roof, and holds the tombs of Vasco da Gama, the poet Luís de Camões, and kings Manuel I and John III. The two-storey cloister is carved with intricate stone tracery.

UNESCO listed the monastery in 1983 together with the nearby Tower of Belém. The Treaty of Lisbon, which reformed the European Union, was signed here on 13 December 2007. The National Archaeology Museum and the Navy Museum occupy wings of the complex.

Entry to the church is free, while the cloister requires a ticket. The monastery is closed on Mondays, and queues are long in summer, so book online or arrive early. Trams and buses from central Lisbon stop outside, and the famous Pastéis de Belém bakery is a few steps away.

Some measurements give a sense of the building. The square cloister is 55 metres on each side, begun by Boitaca and finished by Castilho with a classical lower level and a recessed upper storey. The church nave is 19 metres wide under a single ribbed vault, held up by six octagonal columns about 25 metres tall, and the transept vault of 1522 has no supports beneath it. The south portal stands 32 metres high and 12 metres wide.

After 1833 the buildings passed to the Real Casa Pia de Lisboa, an orphanage and school, which stayed until the area in front was redesigned for the Portuguese World Exhibition of 1940. The poet Fernando Pessoa lies in a plain tomb in one of the cloister arcades, and the refectory keeps 18th-century azulejo tiles.