Monument to the Discoveries (Padrão dos Descobrimentos): The Prow of Empire

Why is it significant?

Stand on the marble mosaic compass rose on the waterfront and look up at the fifty-two-meter limestone monument shaped like the prow of a Portuguese caravel ship pushing out into the Atlantic waves.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand on the marble mosaic compass rose on the waterfront and look up at the fifty-two-meter limestone monument shaped like the prow of a Portuguese caravel ship pushing out into the Atlantic waves. Erected in nineteen sixty to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator, this is the Padrão dos Descobrimentos.

Standing at the very tip of the prow looking out toward the ocean is Prince Henry the Navigator holding a caravel in his hands. Lining the ramp behind him on both sides are thirty-two monumental limestone statues of figures who shaped the Age of Discovery: King Afonso the Fifth, Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral who discovered Brazil, Ferdinand Magellan who circumnavigated the globe, and poet Luís de Camões.

Look down at your feet: the vast fifty-meter-wide Wind Rose mosaic in the plaza was a gift from the government of South Africa, depicting a world map tracing the routes, galleons, and dates of all Portuguese maritime discoveries across the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Walk west along the riverbank path toward the waterside bastion of Belém Tower.