Belém Tower
Belém · 2 July 2024
A fortified lighthouse built to guard the mouth of the Tagus and greet ships coming home from the same voyages that paid for the monastery up the road. The two were commissioned together and finished within a few years of each other.
The tower has spent more of its life half in the river than its builders intended. It originally stood on an island, since joined to the bank by silt, and the carved rhinoceros on one of its turrets is the first depiction of one in Europe, from an animal that arrived in Lisbon in 1515.
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