BELEM, Santa Maria de. - Portuguese Hieronymite monastery in Lisbon. It has beside it a large church and a famous cloister. On the whole it is the most considerable monument in Lisbon. It was begun by King Manuel I on the site where there was a small chapel founded by Prince Henry the Navigator. Founded in 1502 on a design by Boytac, who was succeeded in 1517 by João de Castillo, whose principal collaborator was the French sculptor Nicolas Charterene and then other architects and decorators, it is one of the most important monuments erected in the style called Manueline, which is a local variant, rich in charm, of late Gothic. Construction was interrupted under John III in 1551 and badly restored in the 19th century to repair the damage of the 1755 earthquake. Vasco da Gama and Alvares Cabral set out from there.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: B. Aranho, Bibl. des ouvrages portugais pour servir à l'étude des villes et monuments du Portugal, Lisbon 1900; W. C. Watson, Portuguese Architecture, London 1908 (v. index).

Fabia Borroni

@incollection{ec2_belem_santa_maria_de, author = {Borroni, Fabia}, title = {Belém, santa maria de}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {II}, pages = {1155}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/belem-santa-maria-de} }

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Belem, Santa Maria de

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