According to the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage (DGPC), the new phase of the plan for Conservation and Restoration of the Jerónimos Monastery, whose project is supported by the World Monuments Fund Portugal (WMF-Portugal), is being prepared, and includes exterior and interior interventions in the monument, between 2021 and 2022.
The goal is "to face the urgent problem of the alteration and decay of the stones of the Church" of the monastery, a national monument protected by the DGPC.
A masterpiece of 16th-century Portuguese architecture, the Jerónimos Monastery has been on the World Heritage list of the United Nations Educational, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO) since 1983, together with the Belem Tower.
History and Conservation - Jerónimos Monastery and Church
It is considered a jewel of the Manueline, an exclusively Portuguese style that integrates architectural elements of the final Gothic and renaissance, associating with it a regal Christological and naturalistic symbology that makes it unique. In 2022, the lioz stone monument - the most visited in the country - will celebrate 500 years of the building, and its conservation and restoration, estimated at more than two million euros, has been considered urgent by the guardianship.
The monument, whose construction was the responsibility of João de Castilho (1470-1552), who directed the project between 1517 and 1522, has been the subject of research to create strategies and methodologies of intervention in the degradation of stone, a problem recurrent since the nineteenth century, mainly due to humidity and pollution. The last major intervention in the Jerónimos church dates back to the 1960s.
WMF is a private non-profit organization founded in 1965 in the United States, dedicated to the protection of cultural heritage sites at risk, and has delegations on three continents, sponsoring an ongoing program for the conservation of artistic treasures around the world.
It has supported more than 600 projects in 90 countries, such as Portugal, where the Portuguese branch participated in major actions such as the conservation and restoration of the Belém Tower, the Cloister of Jerónimos, the Gardens of the Queluz Palace, the Equestrian Statue of D. José I and the Cathedral of Funchal.