Jeronimos Monastery—skip?

It is beautiful, but it is a quick visit. I certainly spent less than an hour there in Aug 2019. There was no ticket line to speak of, thankfully - otherwise you do run the risk to spend longer in line than inside!
It is still worth going to Belém regardless, so perhaps just go early and play it by ear?

Sometimes you get lucky. We went to Belem, looked at the lines, then wandered elsewhere in Belem. Came back near the end of the day and the lines were less. I do prefer Alcobaça and Batalha, haven't been to Tomar yet, but the Jeronimos Monastery is still nice.

The Coach Museum in Belem is really nice.

Although I haven’t been to it, after a while and after seeing a few of them, no matter how architecturally interesting they are, a monastery is a monastery is a monastery. For my wife and I, too many churches, monasteries, castles, etc., and they all begin to look alike and we don’t appreciate them as much.

Maybe I haven't seen enough monasteries, but I found Alcobaça, Batalha, and Jeronimos distinctly different from each other. Now churches, those do tend to blend together for me.

I got to the monastery, with my e-ticket already purchased, just before opening time. There were a handful of people ahead of me - some who had to leave the line because they didn't have a ticket. And a couple of tours that got to skip ahead, but didn't take long to go through. By the time I came out, the lines were long for the monastery, but the church hadn't even opened yet and I was 3rd in that line.

CWsocial, when did you visit Lisbon?

Early October.

Maybe the pent up demand for travel now is the difference you have encountered there in Lisbon. During my time there in September 2015, the crowds weren’t bad at all for the Monastery but always a line for the pasteis de nata. lol! Other sites were busy too (Belem Tower, San Justa elevator) - but I powered through. The monastery is beautiful and I’m glad I was able to enjoy it. Now, I have not been to Alcobaca or Tomar yet and understand if you would not want to tour another Monastery.

If you have been to Alcobaça and Batalha, you would notice a lot of similarities. It is lovely, but if you don’t want to fight the crowds, you will have seen similar architecture elsewhere.

Sorry to hear about huge crowds so early!

We went to both Tomar monastery and Jeronimos in Belem last November. If you have been to Tomar you will be disappointed with Jeronimos. Even in November there were big crowds in Belem but we really enjoyed the Palacio Nacional de Belem, and the monuments/statues (eg Alfonso Enrique) and the outside of Belem tower because of the history. The church beside Jeronimos has Vasco de Gama’s tomb which is worth seeing but again big lines (was free however). And try trolley 12 which wasn’t as busy as the others and did a small 20-min loop through central Lisbon….and try and pick a slow cruise ship day!,

Hello from Wisconsin,
Vasco de Gama is buried there. that alone made it worth the time and effort for me. I mean what could be better than that? Vasco de Gama Mall? Which exists out by the airport.

wayne iNWI

So we ended up going, but it was a little bit of a pain. We planned to get there by 9 via train. Turns out there is a rapid train to Cascais and we happened to get it. It doesn’t stop in Belem. So we got off at the next stop and had to wait for the next train that would stop at Belem. We ended up getting to the monastery at 9:30. We had 9:30 tixs purchased a day in advance. The timed tickets mean nothing. Everyone gets in the one line. We got in the monastery at 11am. The monastery is beautiful so we felt it was worth it. Then to get into the church where Vasco rests, we waited another hour. The monastery employees are frustrated, who can blame them, but visitors still need information and are frustrated as well. There is no shade for the lines. Honestly, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. I asked a staff person if lines are lighter in the afternoon. He said often, for the church, sometimes for the monastery. But, as visit numbers increase, I don’t think afternoon will be better.

We did try to go to the Belem Palace. Rick’s map in the guide was not very accurate. When we finally found the visit entrance we were told visits have been suspended since the beginning of COVID.

We did walk thru the lovely garden and went to the towers. We choose to not go in the towers tho the lines seemed to be no more than an hour at each.

Belem is pretty and despite the hassles, we were glad we went.

There is nothing like the Jeronimos Monastery, a huge must see in Portugal! It is unique with its Manueline architecture and details. I loved Alcobaça too but it is totally different from Jeronimos.

Just got back from Portugal ourselves (and Germany and The Netherlands!) and everything was wonderful.

To the point, standing in the sun in the line to the Jeroiomos Cloister was definitely uncomfortable; we spent more time in that line than inside :-( Knowing what we know now, we would have skipped it.

The Ministry that operates the Monastery could learn something from their German counterparts whose timed tickets mean you are given a 15 minute window to enter and they really enforce it. My memory is somewhat hazy about it but the Alhambra in Spain also managed timed entries well.

@unmesh, it is quite strange how they run the monastery. It seems like they sell A LOT of tickets for each time frame. Yet, they are very slow to let people in. It was nice because once in the monastery or the church, for that matter, it wasn't super crowded. However, then they shouldn't sell so many tickets per time slot, and they should honor the time slot. Pena in Sintra seems to be doing a decent job with this, or at least the morning we were there.

And they sell a limited number of tickets per time slot even though said slots are immaterial :-(

As you said, once you're inside it is not too crowded. The overhead is a turn off though