Travel Monastery of Jerónimos Located across the road through an underpass, is Jerónimos Monastery. Its construction began in 1501 to celebrate Vasco da Gama’s safe return from India, but it wasn’t completed until 100 years later. King Manuel funded its construction with an annual tax − equivalent to 70 kilograms of gold − on imports from Portuguese colonies, including spices collected in India. It looked exactly like we remembered it from 1974. Intricate carvings on its two-storey-high south portal resemble lace carved in limestone. Inside the monastery’s Church of Santa Maria, slender pillars − carved to represent palm trees − drew our eyes upward to the Manueline ceiling with its ribbed tracery vaults. Monks lived here for more than four centuries, until religious orders were expelled from Portugal in 1834. The monastery became a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site in 1983. Its church is the final resting place for Vasco da Gama. A life-sized statue of the explorer reclines on top of his stone tomb. Fortunately, the earthquake and subsequent fires and tsunami that destroyed much of Lisbon in 1755 didn’t harm the church, cloisters or monastery. The king’s minister, the Marquis of Pombal, rebuilt the crumbled city into the orderly grid of boulevards and large squares that exist today. We viewed a statue of the marquis on a lofty pedestal overlooking downtown and the Tagus River fromEdward VII Park. Located 35 minutes north of the monastery, Lisbon’s largest central park features a large Portuguese flag that billows out over neatly trimmed box hedges and lawns leading to the statue. Lisbon’s oldest neighbourhood Dating back to the Moorish occupation of the city, Lisbon’s hillside Alfama district was unscathed by the 1755 quake. We travelled back in time as we climbed its maze of twisting, narrow, cobblestone alleys and long stairways. Laundry fluttered in front of wrought iron balconies adorned with potted red geraniums, just as it did on our first visit 45 years ago. Once again, we got lost in Alfama’s labyrinthine streets. (Everybody does.) As before, we kept climbing until we reached the brilliant white ional Pantheon (Church of Santa Engracia). 22 | www.snowbirds.org
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