Jerónimos Monastery. Church Entrance.
Igreja Santa Maria de Belém - Portal. Jerónimos Monastery (1501-1601).
"The church and cloisters form the finest example of the so-called Arte Manuelina, or style of Emmanuel, which may be called a kind of 'Gothic Transition style' and is a late and exuberantly rich development of Gothic, the details of which have been largely borrowed from the decorative forms of the Early Renaissance, from the sumptuous buildings of India, and from the Moors. This blended style is often fantastic and has a decided tendency to over-elaboration, but it is interesting even in its extravagances".--Baedeker 1913
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Following its heyday as a world power during the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal lost much of its wealth and status with the destruction of Lisbon in a 1755 earthquake, occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, and the independence in 1822 of Brazil a... ... read more 
