Sculpture

D. Afonso V

Afonso V, called the African, was King of Portugal and the Algarves. His sobriquet refers to his conquests in Northern Africa.

As of 1471, Afonso V was the first king of Portugal to claim dominion over a plural “Kingdom of the Algarves,” instead of the singular “Kingdom of the Algarve.” Territories added to the Portuguese crown lands in North Africa during the 15th century came to be referred to as possessions of the Kingdom of the Algarve (now a region of southern Portugal), not the Kingdom of Portugal, the “Algarves” being the southern Portuguese territories on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Prince Henry

The fifth son of King John I and his wife Filipa de Lencastre (sister of King Henry IV of England) Prince Henry was born in 1394 and died in 1460.

He was a central figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire and the 15th-century European maritime discoveries and maritime expansion. Through his administrative direction, he is regarded as the primary initiator of what would be known as the Age of Discovery, which began with the conquest of Ceuta (1415), the Muslim port on the North African coast across the Straits of Gibraltar from the Iberian Peninsula.

Vasco da Gama

Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea. His initial voyage to India (1497–1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans and therefore, the West and the Orient, after decades of attempts, with thousands of lives and dozens of vessels lost in shipwrecks and attacks.

Da Gama led two of the Portuguese India Armadas, the first and the fourth. The latter was the largest and departed for India four years after his return from the first one. For his contributions, in 1524 da Gama was appointed Governor of India, with the title of Viceroy, and was ennobled as Count of Vidigueira in 1519.

Afonso Baldaia

Afonso Gonçalves Baldaia was a 15th-century Portuguese nautical explorer. He explored much of the coast of Western Sahara in 1435–1436 on behalf of the Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator. He would later become one of the first settlers of Terceira Island in the Azores.

Pedro Álvares Cabral

Pedro Álvares Cabral was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the European discoverer of Brazil. In 1500 Cabral conducted the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claimed it for Portugal. While details of Cabral’s early life remain unclear, it is known that he came from a minor noble family and received a good education. He was appointed to head an expedition to India in 1500, following Vasco da Gama’s newly-opened route around Africa.

Fernão de Magalhães

Born into a family of the Portuguese nobility in around 1480, Ferdinand Magellan became a skilled sailor and naval officer. In 1517, following a disagreement with the Portuguese King, Manuel I, he moved to Spain, presenting his services to King Charles I of Spain to search for a westward route to the Maluku Islands (the “Spice Islands”). Despite a series of storms and mutinies, the expedition reached the Spice Islands in 1521 and returned home via the Indian Ocean to complete the first circuit of the globe. Magellan did not complete the entire voyage, as he was killed during the Battle of Mactan in the Philippines in 1521.

Nicolau Coelho

Nicolau Coelho was an expert Portuguese navigator and explorer during the age of discovery. He participated in the discovery of the route to India by Vasco da Gama where he commanded Berrio, the first caravel to return; was captain of a ship in the fleet headed by Pedro Álvares Cabral who landed in Brazil. He died at sea, possibly off the coast of Mozambique, while returning from India in the 5th Portuguese Armada with Francisco de Albuquerque.

Gaspar Côrte-Real

Gaspar Corte-Real was a Portuguese explorer who alongside his father João Vaz Corte-Real and brother Miguel, participated in various exploratory voyages sponsored by the Portuguese Crown. These voyages are said to have been some of the first to reach Newfoundland and possibly other parts of northeastern Canada.

Martim Afonso de Sousa

Threatened by the presence of French ships along the coast of Brazil, the Portuguese crown in December 1530 sent a fleet with 400 people led by Martim Afonso de Sousa to establish control and explore. Sousa was the first Royal Governor of Brazil. He settled in the north-east region of the modern country and from 1542 to 1545 he was governor of Portuguese India.

João de Barros

João de Barros, called the Portuguese Livy, is one of the first great Portuguese historians, most famous for his Décadas da Ásia, a history of the Portuguese in India, Asia, and southeast Africa.

Estêvão da Gama

Estêvão da Gama was the Portuguese governor of Portuguese Gold Coast and Portuguese India, named after his paternal grandfather Estêvão da Gama, Estêvão was the second son of Vasco da Gama and brother of Cristóvão da Gama. He commanded the fleet that entered the Red Sea, with the intent of attacking the Ottoman fleet in its harbour at Suez. Reaching Suez, he discovered that the Ottomans had long had intelligence of his raid, and foiled his attempt to burn their beached ships.

Bartolomeu Dias

Bartolomeu Dias, a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household, was a Portuguese explorer. He sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, the first to do so, setting up the route from Europe to Asia later on. Dias is the first European during the Age of Discovery to anchor at what is present-day South Africa.

Diogo Cão

Diogo Cão was a Portuguese explorer and one of the most notable navigators of the Age of Discovery. He made two voyages sailing along the west coast of Africa in the 1480s, exploring the Congo River and the shores of present-day Angola and Namibia.

António de Abreu

António de Abreu was a 16th-century Portuguese navigator and naval officer. He participated under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque in the conquest of Ormus in 1507 and Malacca in 1511, where he got injured. Departing from Malacca in November 1511 with four ships, in an exploratory voyage to the ‘Spice Islands’ of Maluku, he led the first European expedition to reach Timor and the Banda Islands, in Indonesia, in 1512.

Afonso de Albuquerque

Afonso de Albuquerque, also called Afonso de Albuquerque, the Great, was a Portuguese soldier, conqueror of Goa (1510) in India and Melaka (1511) on the Malay Peninsula. His program to gain control of all the main maritime trade routes of the East and to build permanent fortresses with settled populations laid the foundations of Portuguese hegemony in the Orient.

São Francisco Xavier

Co-founder of the Society of Jesus, he was born in Javier, Kingdom of Navarre (in present-day Spain) and he was a companion of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven Jesuits who took vows of poverty and chastity at Montmartre, Paris, in 1534. São Francisco Xavier led an extensive mission into Asia, mainly in the Portuguese Empire of the time and was influential in evangelization work, most notably in India. He also was the first Christian missionary to venture into Japan, Borneo, the Maluku Islands, and other areas. He was about to extend his missionary preaching to China when he died on Shangchuan Island.

Cristóvão da Gama

Cristóvão da Gama was a Portuguese military commander who led a Portuguese army of 400 musketeers on a crusade in Ethiopia and Somalia against the far more massive Adal Muslim army of Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, aided by the Ottoman Empire. He was severely wounded in his last battle, after which he was captured and eventually executed.

1st Flag

Nicolau Coelho holds the flag believed to be the one from the time of D. Afonso Henriques.

Flag

Martim Afonso de Sousa holds the flag used between the reign of King John I and King Afonso V.

Padrão/Marker

The padrão was a stone monument intended to signal the presence of the Portuguese and Portugal’s right to possession. It was a symbol not only of precedence and political domain but also of the consecration of the land to God and the Church.

This padrão is carved with the royal coat of arms used from the reign of King John II until King Sebastian, topped by a cross and drawn on cords by António de Abreu, Diogo Cão and Bartolomeu Dias, the sailors (and navigators) who first placed these stone markers along the southwest and southeast coasts of Africa.

Sword

Symbol of conquest and weapon signifying nobility. It is an attribute not only of the royal family (Peter, Duke of Coimbra, Ferdinand the Holy Prince and King Afonso V) but also of those who had the right to it due to their social standing or because they had distinguished themselves through their warlike exploits.

At the back of the monument stands the sword of Avis, on a stylised cross. The sword and cross symbolised the growth of the empire and faith, which are here used to express the idea of the Crusades through sculpture.