Jerónimos Monastery

About this place

Built in the early 1500s, this monastery was funded partly through revenues from Portugal's maritime trade with Asia. Its elaborate Manueline architecture links religious devotion with royal ambition. The church contains memorial tombs to Vasco da Gama and Luís de Camões, connecting navigation, empire and literature. The monastery was a royal burial place before the religious community was dissolved in the 19th century. Vasco da Gama and Camões were commemorated there through new tombs in 1880. These later acts of remembrance show that the site's meaning continued to develop long after the original period of royal and monastic patronage.