CHAPTER XIII
BELEM
Belem or Bethlehem lies close to the shore, after the broad estuary of the Tagus has again grown narrow, about four miles from the centre of Lisbon, and may best be reached by one of the excellent electric cars which now so well connect together the different parts of the town and its wide-spreading suburbs.
Situated where the river mouth is at its narrowest, it is natural that it was chosen as the site of one of the forts built to defend the capital. Here, then, on a sandbank washed once by every high tide, but now joined to the mainland by so unromantic a feature as the gasworks, a tower begun by Dom João ii., and designed, it is said, by Garcia de Resende, was finished by Dom Manoel about 1520 and dedicated to São Vicente, the patron of Lisbon.[127]
The tower is not of very great size, perhaps some forty feet square by about one hundred high. It stands free on three sides, but on the south towards the water it is protected by a great projecting bastion, which, rather wider than the tower, ends at the water edge in a polygon.
The tower contains several stories of one room each, none of which are in themselves in any way remarkable except the lowest, in which is the perforated screen mentioned in the last chapter. In the second story the south window opens on to a long balcony running the whole breadth of the tower, and the other windows on to smaller balconies. The third story is finished with a fortified parapet resting on great corbels. The last and fourth, smaller than those below, is fortified with pointed merlons, and with a round corbelled turret at each corner.
On entering, it is found that the bastion contains a sort of cloister with a flat paved roof on to which opens the door of the tower. Under the cloister are horrid damp dungeons, last used by Dom Miguel, who during his usurpation imprisoned in them such of his liberal opponents as he could catch. The whole bastion is fortified with great merlons, rising above a rope moulding, each, like those on the tower, bearing a shield carved with the Cross of the Order of Christ, and by round turrets corbelled out at the corners. These, like all the turrets, are capped with melon-shaped stone roofs, and curious finials. Similar turrets jut out from two corners of the ground floor.
The parapet also of the cloister is interesting. It is divided into squares, in each of which a quatrefoil encloses a cross of the Order of Christ. At intervals down the sides are spiral pinnacles, at the corners columns bearing spheres, and at the south end a tall niche, elaborately carved, under whose strange canopy stand a Virgin and Child.
The most interesting features of the tower are the balconies. That on the south side, borne on huge corbels, has in front an arcade of seven round arches, resting on round shafts with typical Manoelino caps. A continuous sloping stone roof covers the whole, enriched at the bottom by a rope moulding, and marked with curious nicks at the top. The parapet is Gothic and very thin. The other balconies are the same, a pointed tentlike roof ending in a knob, a parapet whose circles enclose crosses of the order, but with only two arches in front.
The third story is lit by two light windows on three sides, and on the south side by two round-headed windows, between which is cut a huge royal coat-of-arms crowned.