Padrão dos Descobrimentos

Facing the Tagus, the Monument to the Discoveries has the theatrical force of a ship ready to depart, yet it speaks as much about Portuguese memory in the twentieth century as about the voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was first built as an ephemeral structure for the Portuguese World Exhibition of 1940 and rebuilt in 1960, for the fifth centenary of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator, the figure who advances at the prow of this stone caravel. Behind him come navigators, cartographers, missionaries and men of culture, in a sculptural procession conceived by Cottinelli Telmo and Leopoldo de Almeida. It is worth seeing the monument from a distance, to feel its scale and forward thrust, and then noticing the Compass Rose on the ground, a gift from South Africa. From the viewpoint, the panorama over Belém, the Tagus and the monumental riverfront helps explain why this is a place where landscape, history and memory meet with rare clarity.