A long line of church and monastery adjoining runs parallel with the sea, the conventual portion partly in ruins but now in course of reconstruction, and the eye is at first perfectly bewildered by the richness of the details of the doors and windows of the edifice. Here Manueline architecture is at its earliest and best, before extravagance like that of the unfinished chapels at Batalha overwhelmed it. Here the orthodox florid Gothic and Renaissance styles are leavened, but not obliterated, by the new spirit of expansion and aspiration that found its national expression in what is called Manueline. The west door of the church, where the monastic buildings join it, is extremely beautiful. On each side are rich canopies under which kneel the king and queen with their patron saints, and smaller figures exquisitely carved surround the rest of the door, which is surmounted by flamboyant pinnacles in the Manueline taste. The general idea of the windows, which are very large and high, is of a round-topped arch three or four courses or orders deep, each course being set with bosses of a different, but always elaborate, pattern, an outer moulding representing a twisted cable or twined branches in infinite variety, ending in a series of pinnacles, surrounding the window on the surface of the wall. The great south doorway facing the road and the Tagus, the principal door of entrance, almost defies description by its richness and complexity of ornament, this and the cloisters of the church being perhaps the best specimen of Gothic Manueline in Portugal. Between the two doorways into which the entrance is divided there is a pillar or column, upon which, under a rich Gothic canopy, stands a large figure of a man wearing a tabard. The scheme of decoration is carried up by a series of flamboyant pinnacles and canopied figures beautifully interlaced to the top of the aisle wall. The two great windows flanking this gorgeous doorway match it in magnificence, and one feels on turning away from this monument of human skill and ingenuity that here the short-lived art of the Portuguese Renaissance has reached its highest flight. [Illustration: THE SOUTH DOOR AT BELEM]