Viajar a Lisboa: El Monasterio de los Jerónimos

This is the Belém Tower, a Renaissance fortress that guarded the entrance to the Port of Lisbon, located in the Mar da Paja (Sea of ​​Straw), near the Tagus estuary. The Belém Tower, along with the Jerónimos Monastery and São Jorge Castle, forms the great triad of Lisbon monuments. The fortress was the monastery's primary sentinel, the great symbol of power for a country that would dominate maritime trade in the 16th century. Portugal had been a great seafaring nation during the late Middle Ages, a country that, by the end of the 15th century, was obsessed with one idea: reaching India by a new route and thus establishing trade relations, acquiring the gold of the era: spices. After the disappointment the Portuguese crown suffered upon rejecting Christopher Columbus's offer and his subsequent discovery of America for Spain, King Manuel I of Portugal commissioned the navigator Vasco da Gama to find a new route to India by rounding the Cape of Good Hope. The night before departing on the expedition that would change the course of Portuguese history, on July 7, 1497, Vasco da Gama and some of his sailors spent the night praying at the hermitage of Restelo. This hermitage, considered a holy place, was transformed upon Vasco da Gama's return into the magnificent Jerónimos Monastery. Manuel I ordered its construction to commemorate the great feat of the Portuguese sailors, also intending it to serve as a family pantheon. Construction began in 1514 and was directed by Diogo Boytac and later by the renowned Spanish architect Juan del Castillo, who harmoniously combined Renaissance, Plateresque, and Manueline styles, the latter with a distinctly late Gothic character. The south portal is the main entrance to the monastery church. It is notable for its Gothic-Plateresque decoration, with semicircular arches, pinnacles that rise towards the sky, and exquisite attention to detail in the bas-reliefs. The central figure is the Virgin of Bethlehem, flanked above by the Archangel Saint Michael and below by the figure of Henry the Navigator. To her right and left, apostles and saints such as Saint Jerome complete the symbolic religious narrative. This portal leads into the church, which consists of a single nave supported by six imposing columns. The vault of the crossing is majestic, particularly notable for its ribbed style. The main altarpiece features the iconography of the Mannerist painter Lourenço de Salzedo and a monumental 17th-century tabernacle. At either end of the entrance to the main altar of the principal chapel, supported by two magnificent elephants, lie the tombs of King Manuel I and King John III, as well as their respective wives. This church also houses two illustrious tombs that attract the attention of visitors. These are the tombs of Vasco da Gama himself and the renowned writer Luís de Camões, considered the Portuguese Cervantes or Shakespeare, for his famous work Os Lusíadas, which recounts the exploits of Portuguese sailors in the New World. The church connects to the monastery cloister via a row of confessionals that served sailors to confess their sins before embarking on voyages. The cloister has two levels. The first level, the most splendid, contains the central courtyard, once landscaped and featuring an ornamental fountain, now lost. The cloister is entirely decorated with religious symbols and Manueline motifs, such as the letter M, an armillary sphere, nautical ropes, niches, and medallions. Two large spaces in the lower cloister are particularly striking: the refectory, which once served as the monks' dining hall. Its ribbed vault and tiled religious scenes are noteworthy. The other large lower building is the monks' former chapter house, which was converted into the Hall of Honor to Alexandre Herculano, the most celebrated of 19th-century Portuguese historians. Similar decorative motifs are found again in the upper part of the cloister. Through it you can access the church choir, which gives us a spectacular panoramic view of the building, allowing us to contemplate with magnificent perspective all the beauty of the church's stained glass windows.