Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1495-1521) and is interesting not just because of its extraordinarily imaginative designs,
burbling with life, but also because this dizzyingly creative architecture skipped hand in
hand with the era's booming confidence.
During Dom Manuel's reign, Vasco da Gama and fellow explorers claimed new over-
seas lands and new wealth for Portugal. The Age of Discovery was expressed in sculptural
creations of eccentric inventiveness, drawing heavily on nautical themes: twisted ropes,
coral and anchors in stone, topped by the ubiquitous armillary sphere (a navigational
device that became Dom Manuel's personal symbol) and the cross of the Order of Christ
(symbol of the religious military order that largely financed and inspired Portugal's ex-
plorations).
Manueline first emerged in Setúbal's Igreja de Jesus, designed in the 1490s by French
expatriate Diogo de Boitaca, who gave it columns like trees growing into the ceiling, and
ribbed vaulting like twisted ropes. The style quickly caught on, and soon decorative
carving was creeping, twisting and crawling over everything (aptly described by 19th-cen-
tury English novelist William Beckford as 'scollops and twistifications').
Outstanding Manueline masterpieces are Belém's Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, master-
minded largely by Diogo de Boitaca and João de Castilho; and Batalha's Mosteiro de
Santa Maria da Vitória's otherworldly Capelas Imperfeitas (Unfinished Chapels).
Other famous creations include Belém's Torre de Belém, a Manueline-Moorish cake
crossed with a chess piece by Francisco de Arruda, and his brother Diogo de Arruda's
fantastical organic, seemingly barnacle-encrusted window in the Chapter House of To-
mar's Convento de Cristo, as well as its fanciful 16-sided Charola - the Templar church,
resembling an eerie
Star Wars
set. Many other churches sport a Manueline flourish
against a plain facade.
The style was enormously resonant in Portugal, and reappeared in the early 20th cen-
tury in exercises in mystical romanticism, such as Sintra's Quinta da Regaleira and Palá-
cio Nacional da Pena, and Luso's over- the-top and extraordinary neo-Manueline Palace
Hotel do Buçaco.
Baroque
With independence from Spain re-established and the influence of the Inquisition on the
wane, Portugal burst out in baroque fever - an architectural style that was exuberant, the-
atrical and fired straight at the senses . Nothing could rival the Manueline flourish, but the
baroque style - named after the Portuguese word for a rough pearl,
barroco
- cornered the
