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Gregório Lopes · Public domain
Age of Discovery · 1460s–1524
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama · Portugal
Portuguese navigator
On his first voyage in 1497–1499 he rounded the Cape of Good Hope at Africa's southern tip, then crossed the Indian Ocean from Malindi in Kenya to Kozhikode (Calicut), linking Europe and Asia by sea for the first time. The round trip was the longest ocean voyage then known; it opened an era of seaborne trade with the East, and of European colonial expansion.
Where the story happened
Los lugares que dejó
Historia · Jerónimos Monastery
A monastery built on the spice tax
Manuel I ordered this monastery built near the point from which Vasco da Gama set out on his first voyage to India, as a resting place for the House of Aviz, funded by a tax on the profits of the annual India fleets. The great earthquake of 1755 destroyed most of Lisbon, yet the monastery lost only a balustrade and part of the high choir. In 1880 remains believed to be da Gama's were moved to a new tomb in the nave, just a few metres from the kings he served, Manuel I and João III — though later research found that the coffin moved in 1880 contained the bones of more than one person.
