Monument to the Discoveries (Padrão dos Descobrimentos)

On and around the Monument to the Discoveries

Down on the pavement, the figures tower over you. Keep the compass rose for when you’re up at the top.

The 33 figures on the prow

Henry the Navigator stands at the prow, 9 metres tall, and the 32 figures on the two ramps, 16 a side, are 7 metres each.

The east side, facing the city, is mostly navigators and captains. Vasco da Gama, the first to sail from Europe to India, stands there with Bartolomeu Dias, who rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and Pedro Álvares Cabral, who reached Brazil.

King Afonso V and the missionary Francis Xavier share that ramp with Magellan. He was a Portuguese captain sailing for Spain, and he led the first voyage round the world, though he didn’t live to finish it.

Across on the west side, facing the river mouth, are Luís de Camões, Portugal’s national poet, the mathematician Pedro Nunes, the painter Nuno Gonçalves and two friars. The only woman is Henry’s mother, Queen Philippa of Lancaster.

Round the back, the dedication is carved over an anchor: to Prince Henry and the Portuguese who discovered the paths of the sea.

The compass rose, seen from the top

In front of the monument, set into the pavement, lies a compass rose 50 metres across, in lioz limestone with black and red stone. It was a gift from South Africa, unveiled in August 1960.

At its centre, a 14-metre world map marks the Portuguese voyages with dates and ships, from Madeira in 1418 to the Palau Islands in 1525. Look for the mermaid and Neptune in the decoration.

Visitors say the whole map reads best from the top. A lift takes you to the sixth floor, then 42 narrow steps lead out to the viewpoint, with the river, the bridge and Belém Tower beyond.

Back down on floor −1, the exhibition PADRÃO. Casa-Obsessão, on until 30 December 2026, looks at how the monument has been seen since 1940. That includes the more critical views: the first Padrão went up for the 1940 exhibition of the Estado Novo, the dictatorship that ruled Portugal at the time.

At weekends and on public holidays there’s a film too.

Padrão dos Descobrimentos tickets and hours

The ticket is for the inside: €10 for the lift to the viewpoint, the exhibition and the film, or €5 for the exhibition alone. The figures and the compass rose outside are on public ground, open to anyone. The Lisboa Card includes the ticket, except for ages 13 to 15, who pay.

There’s no slot to book, with or without the card: buy the ticket at the monument’s own desk, or just show a Lisboa Card, from €31.

The lift is where you wait, if anywhere. Visitors report the line building on sunny afternoons, and one who came in the evening found fewer people and a sunset thrown in.

Visitors in 2026 put the visit at 15 to 30 minutes, not counting the wait for the lift.

It’s also the flexible piece of a Belém day: open every day, Mondays included, when Jerónimos and Belém Tower are shut.

Getting in takes 9 steps and then 6 more to the ticket desk, and a stair-climber for manual wheelchairs can be booked ahead. The exhibition has a lift, but the 42 steps put the viewpoint out of reach for wheelchairs.

The Monument to the Discoveries, built twice

The first Padrão was never meant to last. It went up for the Portuguese World Exhibition of 1940, the regime’s great show of national history, in iron, cement and fibrous plaster.

The architect Cottinelli Telmo designed it and Leopoldo de Almeida made the sculpture. The film director Leitão de Barros later wrote that the three of them sketched it in one go, during a night of argument, with match heads.

Twenty years on it came back for good, for the 500th anniversary of Henry’s death in 1460. This time it was concrete faced with Rosal stone from Leiria, with the statues in limestone from Sintra.

Cottinelli Telmo had died in 1948, and the rebuild went ahead under the architect António Pardal Monteiro. It opened on 9 August 1960, on the shore where, as the monument recalls, ships had set out to explore since the 14th century.

The Padrão and the rest of Belém

The Padrão is on the river side of the railway and the main road. The underpass by the Praça do Império garden and the CCB, Belém’s big arts centre, takes you across. Belém station, tram 15E and buses 714, 727, 728, 729 and 751 all serve this stretch.