Jeronimos Monastery

Jeronimos Monastery tickets: which one to buy

The church of Santa Maria is free; the cloister is the ticket, and the two are entered by different doors, which confuses visitors who queue in the wrong place. Book the cloister online with a time slot, because the walk-up line in Belem stretches along the facade by mid-morning. The Lisboa Card covers entry and lets you skip to the reserved lane, which pays for itself if you are also seeing the Belem Tower and riding the trams. Combined tickets with the Belem Tower or the Ajuda palace save a few euros.

Guided tours cost several times the entry and are worth it here because the Manueline carving is a coded programme of ropes, corals and armillary spheres that means nothing without explanation. Walking tours of Belem usually include the monastery ticket, the tower and time for a custard tart; check which entries are actually covered. Audio guides are available at the cloister entrance. Free entry on Sunday mornings applies to residents and fills the site.

Visiting Jeronimos Monastery: what to see

Manuel I ordered the monastery in the 1490s on the spot where Vasco da Gama and his crew kept vigil before sailing for India, and paid for it with a tax on the pepper and spice trade the voyage opened. Building ran through the sixteenth century in the style now called Manueline, late Gothic loaded with maritime ornament. The south portal is a 32-metre screen of sculpture around Henry the Navigator.

Inside the church, six slender columns carved like palm trunks carry a net vault over a hall of extraordinary width, unbroken since it survived the 1755 earthquake that flattened much of Lisbon. Near the entrance lie the tombs of Vasco da Gama and the poet Camoes, moved here in 1880, each carried by stone lions. The two-storey cloister is the masterpiece: 55 metres square, every arch and pillar cut with ropes, artichokes and crosses of the Order of Christ, and no two bays alike. Fernando Pessoa is buried in a corner of it.

Jeronimos Monastery opening hours and the best time to go

Open Tuesday to Sunday, closed Mondays and on a handful of holidays, from mid-morning to early evening in summer and an hour less in winter, with last entry half an hour before closing. Belem fills with coach groups and cruise passengers from about ten until three; the first hour and the last two are calmer. The cloister's upper gallery gets the best light in the late afternoon.

Lisbon is hot in July and August and the queue has no shade. Mass is celebrated in the church and the tourist route pauses. Dress modestly. Allow ninety minutes for church and cloister, and half a day for Belem as a whole, which also holds the tower, the Discoveries monument, the coach museum and the pastry shop that has been making pasteis de Belem since 1837, where the queue is longer than the monastery's and moves faster.