Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Manueline aesthetic is ornate, elaborate, and intertwined, often featuring symbols
from a family's coat of arms (shields with castles, crosses, lions, banners, and crowns)
or motifs from the sea (rope-like columns or borders, knots, shells, coral, anchors, and
nets). Manuel's personal symbol was the armillary sphere—a globe of the earth sur-
rounded by movable rings—which was an indispensable navigational aid for sailors.
You'll also see imports of the age from opium poppies to strange animals.
Architecture students will recognize elements from Gothic's elaborate tracery, the
abstract designs of Moorish culture, similarities to Spain's intricate Plateresque style
(which dates from the same time), and the elongated excesses of Italian Mannerism.
By Christmas, da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope. After battling hostile Arabs
in Mozambique, he hired an Arab guide to pilot the ships to India, arriving on the southw-
est coast in Calicut (from which we get the word “calico”) in May of 1498. He traded for
spices, networked with the locals for future outposts, battled belligerent chiefs, and then
headed back home. Da Gama and his crew arrived home to Lisbon in September of 1499
(after two years and two months on the seas), and were greeted with all-out Vasco-mania.
The few spices he'd returned with (many were lost in transit) were worth a staggering
fortune. Portugal's Golden Age was launched.
