Adelaide's Travel Notes - Portugal

Portugal
Belém

Belém is in fact a suburb of Lisbon, less than 10min by train from Cais do Sodré station, but it has its own atmosphere. The Coach Museum, for instance, is considered one of the best in the world, but I didn't visit it.
	The Monument of the Discoveries was built in 1960 to celebrate 500 years of the death of Dom Henrique the Navigator, the prince that supported the development of the navigation sciences that led to the age of discoveries. In the shape of a caravel, it is surrounded by statues of famous names of Portugal's marine era, like Dom Henrique himself, depicted in the front of it.
Not far from the monument, also by the Rio Tejo (Tagus River), is the Tower of Belém, gracefully decorated in Baroque style.	The tower was built in the 16th century as a watchtower, to protect the ships from pirates.
The Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Monastery of the Hieronymites) was built in the 16th century to celebrate the discoveries, in a mix of Gothic and Baroque styles. Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese navigator that reached India in 1498, is buried there, as well as the poet Luis de Camões and three Portuguese kings. Camões' book "The Lusiads", first published in 1572, celebrates the age of Portuguese imperial expansion to the East.
The Monastery and the Tower were declared World Heritage sites by UNESCO in 1983.

Links
Monastery of Jerónimos
Tower of Belém