King Manuel I authorized the Jerónimos Monastery near Lisbon’s Belém waterfront in 1496, and construction began in 1501 on the site of a small chapel associated with Henry the Navigator. The project commemorated Portugal’s maritime expansion and was supported in part by royal revenues connected with overseas trade. Vasco da Gama had sailed from nearby Restelo for India in 1497, giving the location powerful meaning as the monarchy presented Atlantic and Indian Ocean voyages as both commercial achievement and Christian mission.

Manuel entrusted the monastery to the Order of Saint Jerome, whose monks prayed for the king and for sailors departing Lisbon. Diogo de Boitaca began the church and cloister in a late Gothic idiom enriched with maritime and royal imagery. João de Castilho and later masters continued the work, adding Renaissance elements to the developing Manueline style. Carved ropes, armillary spheres, botanical forms, crosses of the Order of Christ, and elaborate portals joined architecture with the political language of the Portuguese crown.

The church of Santa Maria de Belém and the two-story cloister emerged through several building campaigns rather than a single completed design. Royal burials made the church a dynastic monument, while the monks occupied the adjoining dormitories, refectory, chapter rooms, and service spaces. Construction slowed after Manuel’s death in 1521 and continued intermittently for decades. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake damaged portions of the complex but spared much of its principal stonework, distinguishing it from many buildings nearer the devastated city center.

The Hieronymite community was dissolved in 1833–1834 when Portugal suppressed male religious orders. Secular institutions then occupied the monastic ranges, including the charitable Casa Pia, and nineteenth-century restorers repaired, altered, and sometimes reimagined architectural details. The church received the present tombs of Vasco da Gama and poet Luís de Camões in 1880, making their commemoration part of a later national program rather than the original sixteenth-century arrangement. Museum and administrative uses subsequently divided the former monastic buildings.

The surviving complex contains extensive sixteenth-century fabric, especially the church, south portal, and cloister, alongside later repairs and adapted interiors. Portugal designated it a national monument in 1907, and UNESCO listed it with Belém Tower in 1983. The church remains an active religious space with free access, while the cloister and associated museum areas are managed as ticketed heritage attractions. The monastery’s history is best understood as a royal religious foundation transformed into a national memorial, not simply a decorative monument to exploration.