Jerónimos Monastery

Built on the Vintena da Pimenta

Manuel I obtained the cortes' approval in 1495 and the Pope's in 1496, and construction began on 6 January 1501. It was funded by the Vintena da Pimenta, a five per cent levy on the trade from Africa and the East, which the sources put at the equivalent of 70 kilograms of gold a year; pepper, cinnamon and clove duties went straight to the Crown. That income is why the building is so large and why the carving never stops. The king intended it as the pantheon of the House of Aviz and gave it to the Hieronymite monks, whose job was to pray for his soul and for the sailors leaving from Restelo. They did so until the religious orders were dissolved in 1833.

The first master was Diogo de Boitaca, who had pioneered the Manueline style at Setúbal and who laid out the church and the cloister. João de Castilho, from Biscay, took over in 1517, finished the south portal and threw the single vault across the nave; Nicolau Chanterene carved the west portal the same year. Diogo de Torralva added the main chapel and the choir from 1550, Jerónimo de Ruão followed in 1571, and the money ran out in 1580 when Spain took the throne and the Escorial took the budget. The limestone is lioz, quarried in Ajuda, Alcântara and Laveiras, a few kilometres from the site.

Earthquake, secularisation, the tombs, the treaty

The 1755 earthquake, which flattened the Baixa, damaged only the balustrade and part of the upper choir here. On 28 December 1833 the state secularised the monastery and handed it to the Casa Pia orphanage, which used the dormitories as a school until the 1940s; the Maritime Museum moved into the west wing in 1963 and the National Archaeology Museum into the annexe. In 1880 the remains of Vasco da Gama and of Luís de Camões, who wrote the voyage into The Lusiads, were moved into new tombs by Costa Mota in the church.

The cloister paving and the square outside were remade for the 1940 Portuguese World Exhibition. UNESCO listed the monastery with the Belém Tower in 1983, Portugal signed its EEC accession in the cloister in 1985, and the Treaty of Lisbon was signed here on 13 December 2007.

The nave and the vault

Castilho's vault is the reason to come in. A single span of stellar ribs covers a nave 19 metres wide, carried on six octagonal columns 25 metres high, carved with Renaissance grotesques; at the transept the vault crosses with no pier under it at all, which is what people mean when they say it floats. The 1755 earthquake left it standing.

Look for the medallion on the north column nearest the transept, which may be a portrait of Boitaca or Castilho.

Vasco da Gama and Camões, then the kings

Just inside the west door, under the raised choir, are the two neo-Manueline tombs of 1880 by Costa Mota: Vasco da Gama on the left, resting on the caravel and the armillary sphere, and Luís de Camões on the right, with a laurel wreath. The chancel at the far end, by Jerónimo de Ruão in the classical manner, holds the royal tombs on marble elephants: Manuel I and Maria of Aragon on the left, João III and Catherine of Austria on the right. The side chapels hold Manueline altars and the enamelled terracotta Saint Jerome.

Allow half an hour; the church is one room and the tombs are at its two ends.

Dress code

The monastery publishes none, and it is the question Google asks most. It is a consecrated church where mass is said, so covered shoulders and knees is the courteous default; in the reviews we read nobody reports being turned away in shorts, and the cloister side, which is a museum, has no expectation at all. Carry a scarf in summer and the question goes away.

Two storeys of carving, 55 metres square

Boitaca began the lower storey with its wide arches and traceried windows; Castilho finished the upper one with a plainer classical overlay and turned Boitaca's round columns into rectangular piers. Each wing has six bays, the corners bridged by diagonal arches. The inner walls carry the Manueline vocabulary — rope, armillary spheres, Order of Christ crosses, sea creatures — beside Moorish and Eastern motifs and Plateresque work on the courtyard side. This is the most photographed interior in Lisbon and it is at its best in the first hour, before the light flattens and the groups arrive.

In one of the arcades is the plain tomb of Fernando Pessoa, moved here in 1985. The chapter house off the east walk holds the tomb of Alexandre Herculano; the refectory across from it has an eighteenth-century azulejo frieze of the life of Joseph and the miracle of the loaves. Take the stair to the upper storey for the view down into the court, then follow the gallery to the upper choir: the sixteenth-century choir stalls, restored in 1924, and the only place from which you see the whole nave vault at once.

What the ticket does not cover

The Maritime Museum and the National Archaeology Museum share the building but are separate museums with separate tickets and entrances at the west and east ends of the façade. The National Coach Museum across the tram line is separate again. Nothing on the monastery's page suggests a bundle with any of them.

The building has two doors and two clocks, and most of the confusion about how long it takes comes from treating it as one visit. The church is free, is one room and takes half an hour. The cloister is the €18 (about $21) ticket and is where the hour goes.

The trap in every routing is the ticket office, which shuts at 16:30 while the cloister stays open until 17:30. Arrive at 16:40 without a ticket bought online and you will be looking at the façade.

The lead-in above names the source; the table is the practical version. The 16:30 ticket-office close is the trap: arrive at 16:40 and the cloister is open but nobody will sell you a ticket, unless you already hold one bought online. The other trap is the Sunday morning, when the church is closed for mass until 14:00 while the cloister has been open since 09:30 — reverse the usual order that day.

Quiet hours are our observation, not an official figure: the cloister at 09:30 on a weekday belongs to a few dozen people; by 11:00 the coach parties from the cruise terminal and the Sintra circuits have arrived and the line at the ticket control runs along the façade. After 15:30 it thins again. A guided walk with a skip-the-line entry sidesteps the line at the cost of a fixed start.

Tram 15E from Praça da Figueira via Cais do Sodré and Alcântara stops at Mosteiro Jerónimos, directly in front of the façade; the stop before, Belém (Museu Coches), is for the coach museum and the pastry shop. Cars ran every 10–15 minutes on the August timetable, first at 00:03 and last at 23:53 from Praça da Figueira. Onboard €3.30 (about $3.85); €1.72 with zapping on a navegante card; covered by the €7.25 (about $8.50) 24-hour Carris and Metro ticket and by the Lisboa Card. The getting around page explains the card.

Train: CP Cascais line from Cais do Sodré to Belém station, then five minutes on foot north through the gardens. The single fare was not on the CP page we could read; zapping and the Lisboa Card cover it.

Bus 728 from Restauradores and Cais do Sodré along the river, €2.30 (about $2.70) onboard. On foot from the Belém Tower: fifteen minutes east along the water, then under the road by the Monument to the Discoveries.

The church door is on the west end of the square side; the cloister ticket control is beside it. The great south portal facing the river is for looking at, not entering.

- A pepper tax paid for it. The Vintena da Pimenta took five per cent of the trade from Africa and the East, which the monastery's own history puts at the equivalent of 70 kilograms of gold a year — which is why a building this size has carving on every surface and why the money stopped dead in 1580. (Museus e Monumentos de Portugal, the monastery's history) - The 1755 earthquake barely touched it. The shock that flattened the Baixa cracked the balustrade and part of the upper choir here and left Castilho's vault standing, four kilometres from the ruins. (Museus e Monumentos de Portugal) - The vault crosses the transept with nothing under it. A single span of stellar ribs covers a nave nineteen metres wide on six octagonal columns twenty-five metres high, and at the crossing there is no pier at all.

That is what people mean when they say it floats. (Museus e Monumentos de Portugal) - Fernando Pessoa is in the cloister. His plain tomb was moved into one of the arcades in 1985; Alexandre Herculano lies in the chapter house off the east walk, and both are inside the ticketed half rather than the free church. (Museus e Monumentos de Portugal) - Two European treaties were signed in this building. Portugal's EEC accession in the cloister in 1985, and the Treaty of Lisbon on 13 December 2007 — the reason the EU's governing treaty carries the name of a city rather than a subject.

(Museus e Monumentos de Portugal, the monastery's history)

Pastéis de Belém is on Rua de Belém, a three-minute walk east from the church door past the tram stop, and has been baking the convent recipe since 1837. It opens every day from eight in the morning until nine at night, and an hour later through high summer; on the December holidays it closes early. It publishes no prices anywhere on its own site, which is why none appear here.

The takeaway queue on the pavement is the visible one; the rooms behind seat several hundred and usually move faster, so go in and sit down. Come after the cloister and before the lunch crowd and the Belém morning works in one line. Elsewhere on the square the options are kiosks and the museum cafés; the Belém page names what else is on that kilometre of riverfront.

Belém is a half-day and the monastery is its centre. The order that works on a weekday: cloister at 09:30 when it opens, church at 10:30 when it opens, Pastéis de Belém at 11:15 before the lunch line, then under the road to the Monument to the Discoveries and west along the water to a Belém Tower slot booked for 12:30. On a Sunday swap the church to the afternoon.

On a Monday go elsewhere — the castle and Alfama are open. If you want a guide, the three-hour Belém walk covers the cloister and the pastries from a morning start and leaves you at the tower. The one-day itinerary and the three-day plan place this morning where the closed days allow.