Belém Tower

Landmark · BelémLisbon, Portugal

The Torre de Belém was built between 1514 and 1519 as a gun platform covering the mouth of Lisbon's harbour. Its architect, Francisco de Arruda, then covered that piece of military engineering with decoration no other fortress in Europe carried: twisted rope carved in stone, ribbed domes on the corner turrets, and armillary spheres. Under one corner turret he set a rhinoceros head, generally counted as the first sculpture of the animal in western European art. It was probably modelled on the live rhinoceros King Manuel shipped to the Pope in 1515. The stone is Lioz limestone, which goes from white to honey depending on the hour. The story everyone tells about it is wrong. The tower is usually said to have stood in mid-river until the earthquake shifted the Tagus, but it was built on a small island close to the north bank, and it is the shoreline that moved: reclamation and silting brought the land out to meet it. Inside, a tight spiral stair climbs through the governor's rooms and a powder store to an open terrace where a loggia frames the estuary. Below, at low water, the rock the tower stands on is still visible.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Late afternoon is when the stone turns — the limestone reads white at midday and honey-gold in the last two hours.
Find the rhinoceros — it sits under a corner turret on the seaward side, weathered almost smooth, and most people walk past without ever looking up at it.
The river did not move the tower — it was built on a small island near the bank and the shoreline advanced to it, which is the opposite of the story you will hear on the pavement.
The inside is narrow and one-way — a single spiral stair serves the whole tower, so a queue at the door means a queue on the stairs as well.

Things to do

1
Go up the spiral to the loggia
The stair is narrow enough that traffic runs one way at a time, and it opens onto a terrace with a stone loggia facing the water. From there the estuary widens west toward the Atlantic and the bridge closes the view upstream.
2
Come back at low tide
When the water drops, the rock the tower was built on appears around the base. It is the clearest way to see that this really was an island, and it costs nothing more than checking the tide table and standing on the lawn for two minutes.
3
Go down into the bastion first
The lowest level is the gun deck: a low vaulted room with sixteen embrasures opening straight onto the water, so the cannon fired almost at river level. Under it are the vaulted chambers that held prisoners for two and a half centuries, damp and without windows. Both come before you have climbed a single step of the spiral.