History and culture of Madeira

Church in the parish of Estreito da Calheta (Calheta). Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the municipality of Calheta. Founded: 1683. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the parish of Fajã da Ovelha (Calheta). Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the parish of Jardim do Mar (Calheta). Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the parish of Estreito da Calheta (Calheta). Founded: 1662. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the municipality of Calheta. Founded: 1708. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the municipality of Calheta. Founded: 1693. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the parish of Arco da Calheta (Calheta). Founded: 1689. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the municipality of Calheta. Founded: 1622. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Museum in the municipality of Câmara de Lobos. The history of printing and the press in Madeira, in the municipal library building: opened in August 2013 with the Museu Nacional da Imprensa, it shows presses and machines from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Chapel in the municipality of Câmara de Lobos. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal). Built in the late 15th century on the bay, of which it keeps the bell tower and holy-water stoups; rebuilt in 1702 (single nave, Mannerist doorway), Baroque gilt altar, paintings by Nicolau Ferreira and Luís Bernes.

Church in the parish of Estreito de Câmara de Lobos (Câmara de Lobos). Built in the second half of the 18th century above the convent of São Bernardino, replacing a demolished chapel. Rococo chancel and altarpiece. Feasts on 16 August and the following week.

Church in the municipality of Câmara de Lobos. A chapel founded in 1426 on the orders of Prince Henry, enlarged in the 17th and 18th centuries into a three-nave Baroque church; gilt high altar, 18th-century tiles (Agnus Dei), the arms of João Gonçalves Zarco's family on the front. Feast on 20 January.

Chapel in the parish of Imaculado Coração de Maria (Funchal). Listed as a Property of Public Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Público).

Chapel in the parish of Sé (Funchal). Built in 1714–1715 at the behest of the judge João de Aguiar, who is buried beside it. Baroque, its interior furnishings come from late-20th-century restorations and acquisitions.

Chapel in the parish of Santo António (Funchal). Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the parish of São Martinho (Funchal). Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Convent in the parish of Santa Luzia (Funchal). Listed as a Property of Public Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Público).

Chapel in the parish of São Pedro (Funchal). Listed as a Property of Public Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Público).

Chapel in the parish of Santa Maria Maior (Funchal). Founded: 1662. Listed as a Property of Public Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Público).

Museum in the parish of Sé (Funchal). The fort, built in the 17th century on the seafront to protect Funchal from corsairs; the museum explains what it was for and how the island was defended.

Museum in the parish of Sé (Funchal). Digital art: 360° projections, interactive light installations and soundscapes, in two rooms, one of them the restored former João Jardim cinema.

Museum in the parish of Santa Maria Maior (Funchal).

Monument in the municipality of Machico. On the square of the parish church: the navigator who reached Madeira in 1419 with João Gonçalves Zarco and Bartolomeu Perestrelo, and was granted the captaincy of Machico in 1440 by letter of Prince Henry.

Church in the municipality of Machico. The church of the Teixeira captains, built between the late 15th and early 16th centuries and reworked in the 17th and 18th: a late-Gothic doorway of five archivolts on white marble columns, three inner chapels, two mid-16th-century paintings (Holy Trinity, Pentecost).

Fort in the municipality of Machico. Listed as a Property of Public Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Público). A triangular fort built in 1706 on the orders of Captain Francisco Dias Franco, in the heart of the old town: merlons and a round-arched doorway in island stone, a pebble-paved terrace with iron cannons. It has served as a customs-guard post and a tourist office.

Fort in the municipality of Machico. Founded: 1708. Listed as a Property of Public Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Público).

Church in the parish of Porto da Cruz (Machico). Porto da Cruz's parish church, built in 1574; its roof was rebuilt and the chancel restored in 2000.

Church in the parish of Madalena do Mar (Ponta do Sol). Founded: 1582. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the municipality of Ponta do Sol. Founded: 1656. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Church in the municipality of Ponta do Sol. Listed as a Property of Public Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Público). Built in the late 15th century, its front rebuilt in 1708 to lengthen the nave: single nave, square bell tower, Mudéjar ceiling over the chancel, tiles, a gilt and blue-grey altarpiece, and a green-glazed font believed to come from Seville.

Chapel in the municipality of Ponta do Sol. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal). Built in 1597, in ruins by 1734 and then rebuilt, keeping its altarpiece; simple longitudinal plan, round-arched doorway, Neoclassical high altarpiece, a view over the town.

Chapel in the municipality of Ponta do Sol. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the municipality of Ponta do Sol. Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

Chapel in the parish of Campanário (Ribeira Brava). Listed as a Property of Public Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Público).

Chapel in the parish of Camacha (Santa Cruz). In the centre of Camacha, next to the Café Relógio: begun in 1922 at the initiative of Abel Ferreira Nóbrega, opened in 1924, in the care of the Franciscan Sisters of Nossa Senhora das Vitórias; a round-arched door beneath a niche with the saint.

Chapel in the parish of Caniço (Santa Cruz). Listed as a Property of Public Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Público).

Church in the parish of Ponta Delgada (São Vicente). Listed as a Property of Municipal Interest (Imóvel de Interesse Municipal).

On Praça do Município, the church of São João Evangelista — the Jesuits' "Colégio" — is one of the city's finest 17th-century religious monuments, at the turning point between international Mannerism and Portuguese Baroque. A longitudinal plan and three intercommunicating chapels; its gilded altarpieces rank among the most valuable in the country, the Onze Mil Virgens chapel has a painted ceiling imitating a vault with lunettes and tiled walls, the organ is historic and the paintings date from the 17th and 18th centuries. In the atrium, a windscreen door carved from sugar-box wood, flanked by shell-shaped stoups; on the façade, reliquary busts of St Ignatius of Loyola, St Francis Xavier, St Francis Borgia and St Stanislaus.

The living museum of the island's flavours: opened on 24 November 1940 to become the city's great supply point, the Lavradores market is part of everyday life for Funchal's people and a must for visitors. Edmundo Tavares's building is typical of Estado Novo architecture; the façade, the main door and the fish hall are decorated with large 1940 tile panels from the Battistini faience factory (Maria de Portugal), painted with regional themes by João Rodrigues. Tropical fruit, flowers, vegetables and fish in a bustling, cheerful atmosphere. Largo dos Lavradores; run by the Funchal City Council (mercados.cm-funchal.pt).

The fortress that guarded the old town's seafront against corsairs. Its construction began around 1614 under Jerónimo Jorge, the royal master builder, and was completed by his son Bartolomeu João. Renovated several times, it served as headquarters for British troops and the Army police, as shelter for the victims of the 1803 flood, then from 1992 to 2015 housed the contemporary-art museum, since moved to Casa das Mudas (Calheta). A journey through the island's history, with a privileged view over the Atlantic.

Built in the mid-18th century on the rock of Ilhéu de São José to defend the sea entrance to Funchal, when the port played a central role in trade. Tradition has it that João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, Madeira's discoverers, sheltered here on arriving at an island covered in forest. During the British occupation of 1801–1807 the fort served as headquarters and then as a prison. Long neglected, it was revitalised by the private owner who bought it. Panoramic view over the Atlantic and the harbour.

The palace that dominates Praça do Município was built in 1758 as the residence of the Count of Carvalhal, passed through several hands and was bought in 1883 by the municipality, which has sat here ever since. Altered but faithful to its original design, it is a harmonious example of late-18th-century architecture. Worth seeing: the landscaped inner courtyard, lined with Battistini tiles made in 1940 at the Maria de Portugal factory, and its fountain with a marble "Leda and the Swan" by Germano José Salles. The City Hall can be visited on weekdays on one-hour guided tours in several languages.

Funchal's Italian-style theatre, on Avenida Arriaga. After the demolition of the Teatro Grande in 1833, Madeirans demanded a new theatre for much of the 19th century; it was opened on 11 March 1888 on the model of Lisbon's São Carlos and Milan's La Scala. Named in turn D. Maria Pia, Dr. Manuel de Arriaga and Teatro Funchalense, in 1935 it took the name of Baltazar Dias, a blind playwright and poet born in Madeira in the 16th century. Decoration and scenery by the Italian Luigi Manini and the Portuguese Eugénio do Nascimento Cotrim. A reference programme on the Portuguese scene; check the bill.

On Calçada de Santa Clara, the convent was raised between 1489 and 1496 on the orders of Funchal's second captain-donee, João Gonçalves da Câmara, to house the daughters of the local nobility; long cloistered, it can be visited today. 17th-century Hispano-Arabic tiles on the walls, worked wooden ceilings, restored 17th- and 18th-century canvases. The route takes in the atrium, the São Gonçalo de Amarante chapel (16th century), the porch to the choirs, the Gothic cloister, the lower and upper choirs, and the Santa Clara church commissioned by João Gonçalves Zarco, the island's discoverer. Run by the Regional Directorate of Culture

The church of Funchal's heights, at the top of its staircase, one of the island's most beautiful and historic shrines: Charles I, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, who died in exile at Quinta do Monte in 1922, still rests here. The 18th-century building keeps tile panels evoking Nossa Senhora do Monte and a set of late-18th-century paintings by Nicolau Ferreira. The parish holds one of Madeira's oldest and most popular festivals: novenas from 5 August, the big feast on 14 and 15 August. A step from the cable-car station and the sledge departure.

At the end of Rua de Santa Maria, one of Madeira's historic streets, the Socorro church — Santa Maria Maior — overlooks the sea in the old town. It received part of the heritage of the old São Tiago temple, destroyed by the 1748 earthquake: among those treasures, a Japanese Namban chest, proof that the island lay on the world's trade routes. Baroque architecture; inside, a painting on wood of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and, in the sacristy, a predella of the Apostles. The street's restaurants extend the visit.

Built in the second half of the 17th century by Pedro Gonçalves Brandão, next to Rua Fernão de Ornelas, one of the capital's busiest streets. A single nave, chancel and bell tower; an 18th-century Rococo façade in grey regional stone. In the chancel, a gilded Mannerist altarpiece with a throne and a painting of the patron saint by the Madeiran carver Manuel Pereira; 18th-century tiles depicting Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Open every day with regular Masses — a chance to attend a Madeiran Mass.

One of the island's oldest temples, in the heart of the Zona Velha: raised at the end of the 15th century by Funchal's fishermen in honour of St Pedro Gonçalves Telmo, patron of fishermen and sailors, it long served as the seat of their mutual-aid brotherhood for shipwrecks or illness. Also called the Espírito Santo chapel, it keeps a 15th-century pointed-archivolt portal; the interior, remodelled in the 16th and 17th centuries, shows a painted panel of the saint blessing a Manueline caravel — probably one of the oldest images of a ship in Madeira. Rua de Santa Maria and its restaurants are next door.

Funchal's English church, built in the early 19th century by Henry Veitch, the Scottish British consul who helped keep political and social harmony on the island in troubled times, for a then very present British community. A square central plan with a galilee front, Neoclassical style, a pipe organ by the gospel side. Services are held in English — a singularity in the Region — and the garden around it is worth a pause.

The big seafront esplanade, opened in 2014: on one side the Atlantic, on the other the city climbing towards the mountain. Wide leisure and sports areas for walking, running, cycling or skating, benches for watching the bay, carpets of plants and flowers along the path. Thanks to its size and central position it is the stage for the big open-air events — concerts, exhibitions, fairs — especially in summer.

The liveliest artery of the centre, from Largo da Sé to Rotunda do Infante: begun in 1914, paved with Portuguese calçada, lined with great trees and emblematic cafés. Along it stand the statue of João Gonçalves Zarco, one of the discoverers, the 15th-century cathedral, the Baltazar Dias theatre, the Municipal Garden, the Madeira wine lodges and traditional shops — the natural starting point of any walk in the capital.

In the former Bishop's Palace, founded in 1594 by D. Luís Figueiredo de Lemos, one of the capital's oldest museums shows art from the 15th to the 19th century: painting, sculpture, goldsmithing and gold-embroidered vestments, in two great groups, Portuguese and Flemish art — with Flemish canvases of a size rare in European museums, bought in the sugar era. Among the major pieces: the Água de Pena processional cross (15th century), a 16th-century Antwerp tray and chalice, and the cross given by King Manuel I to the cathedral. On the balcony, an 18th-century tile panel on Faith, Hope and Charity. Guided tours available

Open to the public since 1953 on Calçada do Pico, in the quinta that was the second residence of the family of João Gonçalves Zarco, Madeira's discoverer. Decorative arts in abundance: 17th-century Portuguese furniture in exotic Brazilian woods and English Chippendale, Hepplewhite and Sheraton pieces. European porcelain (Meissen, Bristol, Vista Alegre) and Qing-dynasty oriental pieces. Luso-oriental works of the 16th–18th centuries; sculpture, including terracotta nativity figures; goldsmithing and ceramics. The garden around it, with its archaeological park, is itself listed among the city's gardens.

The big reddish house on Calçada de Santa Clara, known as Casa da Calçada, once home of the Counts of Calçada, became the property of Frederico de Freitas (1894–1978), a Madeiran lawyer, notary and collector who bequeathed his vast collection to the Region in 1978; the museum was completed in 1999. Sculpture, painting, prints, furniture, ceramics, crystal and pewter of the 17th–19th centuries, with religious themes dominant; the prints on regional culture are a major iconographic source on 18th- and 19th-century Madeira.

The museum Cristiano Ronaldo wanted in his home town, opened on 15 December 2013 on Praça do Mar: 400 m² retracing his path from Andorinha and Nacional (Madeira) to Sporting, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus, with more than a hundred individual and team trophies — including his four Golden Boots (2007/08, 2010/11, 2013/14, 2014/15) and five Ballons d'Or (2008, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017) — photographs, videos, interactive content and a wax statue.

The "Casa da Luz", housed in Funchal's former power station, opened in 1897 by the Madeira Electric Lighting Company, the island's first concessionaire, and shut down in 1989 after the municipal electricity services were created in 1949. Rare old machines and appliances, and three routes: "Lights of Funchal" (the city's successive lighting), "A Century of Electricity" (the archipelago's electrification) and "Energy Sources", looking to renewables. Interactive resources, a temporary-exhibition room, a documentation centre and an auditorium.

The place where the centuries-old story of Madeira wine is told, on Avenida Arriaga: a group of Baroque civil buildings housing the island's oldest wine cellars, from the 17th and 18th centuries, beside the site of the old São Francisco convent demolished in the 19th century. In 1913 the Madeira Wine Association, now the Madeira Wine Company, was founded here, bringing several houses together. The museum follows the wine's journey from vine to transformation and explains the Sercial, Malvasia, Verdelho and Boal grapes; you visit the ageing rooms and the tasting rooms. Included here as heritage

The country's oldest photography studio, on Rua da Carreira, bought in 1865 by Vicente Gomes da Silva (1827–1906) and active until the 1970s; the Regional Government bought the whole collection in 1979 and opened the museum in 1982 in the restored studio. Sets, cameras, specialised furniture, frames with original photographs, technique manuals and above all an archive of three to four million images since the 1850s — the island's visual memory — plus a cinema section.

The archipelago's oldest museum still in operation, opened on 5 October 1933 in the Palácio de São Pedro, Rua da Mouraria, one of the great examples of mid-18th-century Portuguese civil architecture. Its study collections exceed 50,000 records for more than 200,000 species: fish, birds, land and marine mammals, marine reptiles, insects, invertebrates, plants, rocks and minerals of the archipelago and marine fossils from Porto Santo — the gateway to understanding the island's biodiversity before heading for the trails. Run by the Funchal City Council

Madeira's embroidery museum, attached to the Madeira Wine, Embroidery and Handicraft Institute, keeps pieces more than 150 years old: embroideries made between the 1860s and 1930s, shown in a recreated romantic 18th- and 19th-century atmosphere with Victorian furniture, mannequins and a reconstructed alcove. A dive into the art that made the island famous. The regional tourism board reports the museum temporarily closed: check before going (tel. +351 291 211 600).

A tribute to two brothers born in Madeira, protagonists of Portuguese modernism: Francisco Franco, one of the most prominent sculptors of the 1920s, much in demand for the official statuary of the Estado Novo, and Henrique Franco, an award-winning painter who took part in the Nossa Senhora de Fátima church in Lisbon, an emblematic work of the movement. Opened in 1987 in the premises of the former Auxílio Materno-Infantil, the museum brings together oils, drawings, prints, small frescoes and sculptures from their youth to their maturity. Run by the Funchal City Council

Between the Santa Clara convent and the Quinta das Cruzes museum, a late-19th-century house on Calçada do Pico holds the "Universe of Memories": everything that João Carlos Nunes Abreu — journalist, writer, manager, hotel director and Regional Secretary for Tourism and Culture — donated to the Region. A very diverse set of objects gathered from around the world, decorative arts first, plus cultural and educational initiatives.

Fourteen million years summed up in an interactive visit of an hour and a half, on Rua Dom Carlos I near the cable-car station: authentic historical objects and multimedia, in eight chapters — volcanic origins, legends of discovery, discovery of Madeira, turmoil and trade, strategic island, development, after navigation, exploring Madeira. From pirates to centuries-old traditions, for all ages, with a panoramic terrace over the centre.

On Praça de Colombo, the museum opened in 1996 brings back Madeira's golden age of sugar, on the memory of João Esmeraldo's Manueline house — where Christopher Columbus stayed. Flemish sculptures and paintings bought with sugar money, sugar moulds, silverware and objects unearthed from the Esmeraldo house recreate the social life of the 15th and 16th centuries, when "white gold" made the island's fortune. Regional Directorate of Culture

A market opened on 2 June 2018 in the heart of Camacha, which quickly became a regular stop for residents and visitors alike. Fresh fruit and vegetables are sold here, many grown in the parish itself: its slightly cooler climate than the coast suits certain crops. Camacha is also the wickerwork village.

The municipal market of Santa Cruz, about 680 m² in the town centre, built in the second half of the twentieth century. Regional produce is sold here, given its particular character by the island's subtropical climate and fertile soils.

Ribeira Brava has long been a trading point on the west coast: produce from the neighbouring settlements has been sold and bought here for decades. The market has stayed at the centre of the town's daily life, with the fruit and vegetables the island's subtropical climate grows.

The oldest chapel in Funchal, with nearly six centuries behind it, in the middle of Santa Catarina Park and its 36,000 m². Its building was ordered by Constança Rodrigues de Almeida, wife of Funchal's first donatary captain, João Gonçalves Zarco. The architecture follows the regional seventeenth-century tradition: a Mannerist portal and a porch on red stonework columns; the holy water font dates from the early sixteenth century. Before the entrance a sculpture honours Prince Henry the Navigator; higher in the garden stands O Semeador, by the Madeiran sculptor Francisco Franco.

Built in the first half of the sixteenth century and still in the hands of the family that founded it, the Fávilas. French corsairs invaded and ransacked it a few decades after it was built: nothing survives of the original decoration, replaced in the eighteenth century by what is seen today. The architecture kept its shape. Nearly five hundred years on, the chapel is still a weekly meeting point.

A seventeenth-century chapel built by António Dantas, on the edge of Funchal bay. It is one of the few places of worship on the island where mass is said in English, on Sundays at 10 a.m. The Portuguese writer António Feliciano de Castilho lived in the house attached to it. Successive restorations have kept the essentials of the building and its interior.

One of the island's most recent churches, consecrated in 2002 on Avenida Colégio Militar, in the parish of São Martinho. It took over as the Nazaré parish centre, a role the Nazaré chapel had held since 1960. The architect José Rafael Botelho designed a modern building whose tower rises about 40 m. Inside, the font, the tabernacle and the altar are carved in green marble.

Built in the first half of the nineteenth century by Afonso Anes, near the old São Martinho chapel. Inside, the gilded altar and the frescoes telling the life of the patron saint hold the eye, as do Afonso Costa's ceiling paintings. Every year, in the first fortnight of November, the church hosts the feast of Saint Martin, one of the island's best attended; the parish civic centre doubles as a cultural hall.

The oldest surviving piece of civil architecture in the archipelago, on Caminho de Santo Amaro, in the parish of Santo António. Four buildings make up the group: the Torre do Capitão, raised in the mid-fifteenth century by Garcia Homem de Sousa, son-in-law of João Gonçalves Zarco, still medieval in feel; the Santo Amaro chapel, also fifteenth-century, which holds a stained-glass window by Pedro Calapez and an altar by the sculptor Rui Sanches; the Casa dos Romeiros, which took in pilgrims of the devotion to Santo Amaro and now serves as reception and shop; and a recent building for temporary exhibitions.

At Terreiro da Luta, in the parish of Monte: the island's largest monument, born of a vow. In 1917, during the First World War, German submarines shelled Funchal twice. Madeirans promised to raise a statue to Our Lady of Monte if peace returned. Ten years later the shrine was inaugurated on 14 August, the day of Nossa Senhora do Monte, to plans by the architect Emanuel Ribeiro, with a five-metre marble statue. Around its base runs a rosary made from the chains of the ships sunk in the attacks.

The first convent founded outside Funchal, in 1479. A flood carried off the original building soon after; by 1480 the church and its outbuildings were rebuilt, this time away from the stream. The Baroque group that survives has an irregular plan: a church and a chapel with single naves, gabled façades, Baroque portals, dormitories and service buildings. It belongs to the Third Order of Saint Francis; soft and hard stonework, plastered regional masonry, oak and rolled pebbles are all visible.

Opened in 2011, it is one of the island's newest churches. It replaced the convent of São Bernardino as the seat of the parish of Santa Cecília, created on 24 November 1960 by decree of the Bishop of Funchal, D. David Sousa. The architect Luís Jorge Santos gave it the shape of a boat, in reference to the apostle Peter's: straight lines, minimalism, a bell tower detached from the body. The single nave is dominated by a Christ Pantocrator. At Christmas the missas do parto are sung here.

The only piece of historic heritage in Curral das Freiras, built in the early nineteenth century. The place had a chapel from the mid-seventeenth century; a growing population and the distance from the parish of Santo António pushed for independence, granted on 17 March 1790 by charter of Queen Maria I. The ruined Santo António chapel could not serve as a seat, so the church was built. The high altar and the side altars to Our Lady of Livramento and the Sacred Heart date from the major works of the early twentieth century.

A museum devoted to the Madeira banana and its place in the island's economy, at Lugar de Baixo. The route is cut into themed rooms — history, transport, nutritional role — with holograms and photographs. The visit takes in the experimental fields: bunch transport systems and equipped greenhouses. The bar serves banana-based products, including a banana beer, and a shop closes the route.

A sixteenth-century chapel, begun around 1510 as the oratory of the houses of Pedro Gonçalves da Câmara, son of Funchal's second captain. The Renaissance marble holy water font was set here in 1530. The architecture mixes Manueline and Revivalist, the latter above all in the wide rectangular galilee opened on the main front, carried on marble columns with Corinthian capitals. Inside, a painted Way of the Cross and above all an octagonal Mudéjar alfarje ceiling, white and blue, with white and gilded cordage. Classified a Monument of Public Interest.

Founded in 1529 by Francisco Homem de Gouveia and his wife Isabel Afonso, beside a large estate that then served as the seat of a morgadio. It is a small, popular building of the kind raised all over the island during the first century of settlement. It is classified a Monument of Public Interest. It stands at Estreito da Calheta, a parish whose name comes from its closeness to Calheta and from the narrow shape of its valley.

The parish church of Ponta do Pargo, on the plateau of the western tip. The parish was set up in the mid-sixteenth century in a small São Pedro chapel, reworked in 1599 and 1620; the present building comes from the works of 1851 and keeps nothing of the old one. Mannerist in style, it holds the eye with its bell tower, gabled front and arched portal. Inside is one of the island's oldest pieces: a gilded silver chalice on a six-pointed star base, older than the church itself.

Classified a Monument of Municipal Interest, the nineteenth-century aqueduct runs between Caminho do Engenho and Rua da Estacada. It carried water to Machico's old sugar-cane mill — since the sixteenth century the island had been one of the great producers of sugar, the 'white gold'. Of the original fourteen arches, eight survive, in red Caniçal stonework, with spans of 4.40 m, leaning on the retaining wall of Ribeira de Machico. The masonry is rustic basalt rendered in lime mortar; the channel, the levada, is stone and lime. The structure became a museum in 2001, to a conservation design by the architect Victor Mestre.

A church of 1967 at Caramanchão, dedicated to Saint Joseph, patron of workers and families. A small eighteenth-century chapel stood on the same spot; ruins of archaeological value remain. The church is best known for its Christmas services: the missas do parto draw a crowd, and sharing regional food after mass is part of the ritual.

The parish church of Água de Pena, built in 1745 on the rubble of a sixteenth-century chapel. Baroque in style, it has a longitudinal plan with a single nave, a gabled main front and a bell tower. The substance is inside: the high choir and the pulpit, and two side altarpieces in white and gilded carving from the late Baroque. The historic Fonte do Seixo is the parish's other point of interest — the same parish where the runway of Madeira airport was extended.

The parish church of Santa Cruz, the second largest church in the Region after Funchal Cathedral, on whose model it was built in the sixteenth century. The structure has stayed intact: bell tower, pointed portal with colonnettes and archivolts. Inside, the chancel is covered by a ribbed vault resting on corbels and carries a polyptych of six sixteenth-century oil paintings on wood, from a good Portuguese workshop. Among the liturgical objects, a gilded silver chalice marks the passage from Gothic to the vocabulary of the Roman Renaissance.

A charity and health institution housed for centuries in a building begun in 1530, of Mannerist hospital architecture. The plan is rectangular, made of several blocks and garden areas; the wings have been much reworked, but two portals topped by a balcony window survive. The Santa Isabel chapel is attached to it. The institution still provides social services in the municipality.

Built in the first half of the twentieth century on the rubble of a 1641 hermitage, the chapel changed approach: the altar was moved and the Gothic front gave way to a plainer Baroque design. Inside, an image of Santo Amaro in gilded, estofado wood holds the eye. The patron saint's feast falls every 15 January: in Madeira it marks the end of the Christmas season and comes with the tradition of 'cleaning out the cupboards'.

One of the island's oldest Marian churches, built in the first half of the sixteenth century near an estate called Fazenda das Moças, which belonged to the sisters Isabel Álvares and Leonor Álvares. The style is Manueline; the Renaissance-inspired carved wooden altarpiece and the chancel are what to look at. The chapel is open for visits and for mass, nearly five centuries after it was built.

Built in 1783 under licence from Father José Lomelino Barreto, it is the seat of one of the island's oldest parishes. Two earlier churches preceded it, one to Santo Antão, the other to the Holy Spirit. The plan is rectangular with a single nave, on the hinge between Baroque and Rococo: a main front with a gabled cornice, topped by a window and a rendering of the royal arms; inside, late eighteenth-century Rococo altarpieces in gilded and white carving.

The seat of the parish of Gaula, built in the mid-eighteenth century on the rubble of the old church, destroyed in the 1848 earthquake. It keeps a historic bell of about 120 kg given by King João V and a set of liturgical objects including a fifteenth-century processional cross. The feasts of Nossa Senhora da Luz are held here every September and draw people from all over the island.

Built in 1907 by Canon Henrique Modesto de Bettencourt, in the parish of Água de Pena (Machico). A fire destroyed it in 1976; it was rebuilt in 1987. The architecture is Revivalist and neo-Mannerist, on a longitudinal plan. Inside, the chancel is topped by a rendering of the Agnus Dei; the altarpiece is framed by two corbels carrying sculptures of Our Lady of Fatima and Saint Joseph. It is also called the Cardais chapel.

A small eighteenth-century fort set above Santa Cruz beach, from which threats could be seen coming: the island was long a target for corsair raids, and such fortifications served to protect the population. Restored during the liberal wars by sergeant-major Paulo Dias de Almeida, it takes its name from an old chapel to Saint Ferdinand that stood here. Records show that by 1820 that small church no longer existed; the guardhouse then stood beside another chapel, to Saint Lazarus, which has also gone.

A cultural centre housed in the Quinta do Revoredo, the residence the English merchant John Blandy had built on the Santa Cruz coast in the first half of the nineteenth century. The garden, planted with century-old trees and open to the Atlantic, holds two sculptures. The place hosts exhibitions, theatre and concerts. Access ramps and adapted toilets.

A sculptural group by the Madeiran Luís Paixão, unveiled in February 2014 in the municipal garden of Santa Cruz. It honours Mary Jane Wilson (1840-1916), who came to Madeira in 1881 as a nurse accompanying an English patient and settled shortly afterwards in Funchal, where she spent the rest of her life. As early as 1884 she founded the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Our Lady of Victories, took the name Sister Mary of St Francis and devoted herself to teaching children and caring for the sick and the poor. Madeirans called her 'Boa Mãe'.

The largest Baroque church in the Autonomous Region of Madeira, built in the seventeenth century in the parish of São Jorge. Its main front faces north and its window arrangement is unusual in the regional typology: the portal is topped by three sill windows and, in the tympanum, by another window flanked by pilasters carrying a straight cornice. The longitudinal plan holds a single nave and a lower, narrower chancel, with a square bell tower. At the head of the nave, the presbytery is marked by a rosewood balustrade curving at the sides; the altarpieces are in Joanine gilded carving, and there are paintings on canvas.

A chapel set into a large rock, at Fazenda, in the parish of Faial. The main front, facing east and pierced by a round-arched door, is plastered masonry painted white, topped by a Latin cross in red Cabo Girão stone and by a bell tower with a gilded bronze bell. The single nave is cut into the rock itself, giving an irregular barrel roof; inside, a small altar in Mannerist stonework and a holy water font. A chapel is mentioned here as early as the sixteenth century, in a former refuge of Canary Island slaves; the official foundation dates from 1685, the year still carved on the arch of the front. The pilgrimage was restored in 1984.

A 14 m lighthouse set at 271 m of altitude on Ponta de São Jorge, in service since April 1959 though designed as early as 1948. The ribbed cylindrical tower is backed by an adjoining building. It first held a large-model third-order drum dioptric lens (500 mm focal length) and a gas filament lamp; connected to the public electricity grid in 1962, it ran on gas and electricity, then received 12 V / 100 W halogen lamps in 1995 giving it a range of 15 miles. It remotely controls the São Lourenço lighthouse, at the island's other end.

A well-off family house from the mid-eighteenth century, at Ponta Delgada, kept in the island's architectural tradition. It was a farming property: the whole ground floor was taken up by stores and wine cellars, next to a press. In the twentieth century a small chapel and extensions near the kitchen were added. The furniture is mostly Madeiran of the nineteenth century — mahogany, til, chestnut — on contemporary English models, the great reference of regional joinery of that century; a second, more eclectic set mixes English and Portuguese pieces of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There is also a seventeenth-century oil on canvas of Our Lady with Child, a gilded estofado wooden Saint Anthony from the mid-seventeenth century, and a carved and gilded wooden mirror from a national workshop of the time of Queen Maria I.

Santana's ex-libris turned into one of the icons of the whole archipelago: triangular wooden houses — an abundant, cheap material that balances the indoor temperature — topped with a thatched roof, a way of using the straw of cereals (wheat, rye) while the pitch keeps them watertight. Fronts painted blue, red and white; inside, a ground floor split into kitchen and bedroom, and an attic for storing the harvest. The Núcleo de Casas Típicas in the centre of Santana shows a group of them and tells their story; the Núcleo's lookout is one of the 85 official viewpoints.

A journey to the centre of the Earth: the São Vicente caves were born 890,000 years ago from an eruption on Paul da Serra, when the lava, set at the surface by the cold, kept flowing inside and carved volcanic tubes with the gases released. Known to the locals since 1885, they were among the first volcanic caves opened to the public in Portugal, in 1996; you walk 700 m of galleries among lava stalactites, lakes and tunnels five to six metres high, before the Centro do Vulcanismo, which rounds off the visit in an educational way. The ex-libris of the municipality of São Vicente. Paid entry (fee and hours not found on an official source).

"An open door to knowledge and a window to the sea": at Caniçal, the former whaling port, the museum founded in 1989 and housed since September 2011 in new premises is one of the most innovative of its kind in the world, with life-size models of whales and dolphins and stereoscopic 3D films. A vast ethnographic collection — old tools, testimonies, accurate documentation — traces whaling in Madeira through the 20th century, while the museum runs research and conservation projects on the archipelago's marine life. Rua Garcia Moniz 1

The west coast's knowledge centre on Madeiran culture, in a building that belonged to Funchal's Santa Clara convent in the early 17th century, converted into an industrial unit in 1853 — an animal-drawn cane mill and an aguardente still were installed in 1862 — then sold to the Junta Geral. The Regional Government created the museum here, opened on 15 June 1996 to a design by the architect João Francisco Caires, with the mission of researching, documenting and promoting the expressions of Madeira's culture and ethnography: fishing, farming, levadas, wine, crafts, transport, domestic life. Regional Directorate of Culture

On a hill above Calheta, just over thirty minutes from Funchal, Madeira's contemporary-art museum: opened in October 2004 in a building by the architect Paulo David, nominated for the Mies van der Rohe award in 2005 and awarded the Alvar Aalto medal in 2012 for its integration into the landscape. The collection, moved from the São Tiago fortress, gathers about 400 pieces from the 1960s to today — Lourdes Castro, Vieira da Silva, Fernando Calhau, Palolo, Cabrita Reis, Blaufuks, Ana Hatherly… — with an auditorium, library, shop, cafeteria and restaurant, temporary exhibitions, concerts and theatre.

Madeira's "white gold" told where it is still processed: the Sociedade dos Engenhos da Calheta was founded between the late 19th and early 20th century, in full industrialisation, and its mill is one of the island's oldest. The museum recreates the factory's story and shows the transformation of cane into cane honey and aguardente, two regional products of national and international renown, through 19th- and 20th-century pieces — genuine industrial-archaeology objects — a bilingual film and panels.

On the north coast, at Sítio da Lagoa in Arco de São Jorge, a living museum of Madeira wine set in the experimental viticulture field: a trial area and an old restored cellar with the winegrowers' tools, mostly donated by the local people, three restored presses, a section on the cycles of the vine and the characteristics of the grape varieties grown in the region, a tasting area for regional products (bolo de mel, cornbread) and a shop. Open weekday afternoons only

At Sítio dos Lameiros, on the heights of São Vicente, the lime museum tells of an activity that counted in the municipality's history: over about 12,000 m², two limestone quarries, a lime kiln, fossils more than five million years old and the terraces, levadas and hayloft that supported production. A thirty-minute trail links the quarries to the museum — the one the kiln workers took with wood, stone and water — and the exhibition explains the whole process, from extraction to firing and the uses of lime. Listed as regional public-interest heritage in 2005.

In the centre of Machico, in the renovated 17th-century manor of the Solar do Ribeirinho, the museum of the municipality's history: four interactive thematic areas around the figures and moments that made Machico — a cross of Machim, the portrait of Tristão Vaz Teixeira, first captain-donee, a 17th-century processional cross, a 16th-century seal with an ivory handle and silver stamp, an engraved poem by the 18th-century poet Francisco Álvares de Nóbrega, the "little Camões" born here. Regional Directorate of Culture

On Largo do Senhor dos Milagres, the chapel that keeps the memory of the first Mass celebrated in Madeira, the day after the discovery, in 1419. The present building, vernacular architecture with Baroque features, replaced the chapel of Christ (or of Mercy) destroyed by the 1803 flood; several stones of the original pointed-arch portico survive, the rest being Neo-Manueline replica. Inside, the image of the crucified Christ swept away by the flood and "miraculously" recovered from the sea three days later; every year a procession bringing thousands of pilgrims recalls the event.

In the centre of the little town, one of the west coast's most visited cultural venues, dedicated to John dos Passos, the American modernist writer whose grandfather, Manoel Joaquim dos Passos, was born in the municipality before emigrating to the United States; the author visited the island as a child in 1905, then with his wife and daughter in 1960. Housed in a 19th-century building that belonged to relatives of the writer, bought in 2000 by the Regional Government: a permanent room on his life and work, two museum areas, a library, temporary exhibitions and an auditorium.

On Ribeira Brava's seafront, the small round tower ordered in 1708 by the governor Duarte Sodré Pereira to protect the coast and the anchorage in the days of pirate and corsair attacks. The flood of October 1803 left it in ruins; restoration works begun in 1916 produced the present monument: a terrace with a sentry box, a round-arched doorway topped by an inscription and the national coat of arms on the north side, a niche with the image of St Benedict on the sea side. A landmark of the west coast's military heritage, to be seen with the São Bento church and the ethnographic museum.

At Faial, on Santana's north coast, an 18th-century battery built to watch for invaders, today a leisure space and lookout: a semicircular plan following the slope, an outer wall, the lower two thirds set forward, an ashlar coping, and ten small English cannons that once defended the spot. A monument of local value since 1996, much visited for its view of Faial, São Roque do Faial, Porto da Cruz, Penha d'Águia and Ponta de São Lourenço. Open daily at the hours shown.