Jerónimos Monastery - Lisbon

Jerónimos Monastery, or Hieronymites Monastery, was commissioned by King Dom Manuel I, the Portuguese monarch at the time of Vasco da Gama’s pioneering sea voyage to India in 1498. Construction began in 1501 and took nearly a century. The Discoveries financed the Monastery construction via revenue from the “pepper tax” and a 5 percent levy on trade with Africa and the Orient. Several architects oversaw the building project throughout the sixteenth century, namely Diogo de Botaica, the architect responsible for Belém Tower and one of the key figures of what would become known as the Manueline architectural style, and João de Castilho, who took over the work around 1517. The monks of the Order of Saint Jerome occupied the monastery it's dissolution in the nineteenth century. The Mosteiro was then secularised and handed over to the charitable institution, Real Casa Pia de Lisboa, that occupied the building until 1940 with a school and an orphanage. The monastery church became the parish church of the Belém district. In the twentieth century, Jerónimos Monastery underwent major restorations that concluded the central body of the annexe and restored the pews

Done