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The Monastery of Santa Maria de Belem is one of Portugal's best-known monuments. At the height of the Romantic period, it became the starting point on the slow and steady path towards recognition of what we have come to know as 'heritage ideology'. As a national symbol, the monastery attracted the attention of countless art and architectural historians, appearing in specialist publications even before the mid-nineteenth century. Later, the monument was included in the itinerary of every visitor to Lisbon, confirming its status as an exceptional building in the context of an already long-established tourist culture.
The Mosteiro dos Jeronimos is not simply a monument to Portuguese discoveries, which include, as some chroniclers claimed, Vasco da Cama's discovery of the sea route to India. It is also a monument to art and architecture from the period c.1500-50. Here we find the most spectacular expression of the Portuguese version of the late Gothic style, which art historians have felicitously named 'Manueline style' in tribute to the monastery's founder, King Manuel I (who reigned 1495 - 1521), combined with elegant Classicism and Counter-Reformation influences.
The building contains so many things, one of the most striking and important of which is its astonishing imperial symbolism intimately bound up with a vision of the worldwide spread of Christianity.
An intricate but exceptionally beautiful interweaving of forms and ideas has made the Jeronimos one of the world's most famous monuments, which deservedly became a World Heritage Site in 1983.
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