The Monastery of Batalha — formally Santa Maria da Vitória — is the single most important Gothic building in Portugal and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983. Begun in 1386 by João I as a thank-offering for victory over Castile, it took 150 years to build, employed seven master architects, and was finally left unfinished in the early sixteenth century when royal attention turned to the Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon. The fact that it is incomplete is part of its drama.
The exterior is dense limestone Gothic, dripping with pinnacles, gargoyles, and traceried windows. Inside, the nave is austere — Cistercian-influenced, austere proportions, no decoration — and leads to the Founder's Chapel (Capela do Fundador), a square room beneath a star-vaulted octagon where João I and his English queen Philippa of Lancaster lie hand in hand. Their four sons — including Henry the Navigator — are buried along the south wall.
The Royal Cloister (Claustro Real) is the most decorative space, with Manueline tracery filling each arch — armillary spheres, twisted ropes, lotus flowers, and crosses of the Order of Christ. The Chapter House holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, eternally lit and guarded. Behind the apse stand the Unfinished Chapels (Capelas Imperfeitas), a circular pantheon roofless to the sky, the Manueline portal of which is one of the great virtuoso pieces of late-Gothic sculpture in Europe. The whole complex deserves at least 90 minutes.