São Pedro

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 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

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.

History, heritage and panorama in one: the viewpoint occupies the São João Baptista fortress, known as Castelo do Pico, built in the 17th century to fend off corsairs and for a long time the city's gunpowder store. In the 20th century the Navy set up its communications centre here; the antennas of the naval radio-telegraph station earned the hill the nickname "Pico Rádio". Renovated several times, the citadel-shaped enclosure is now a privileged spot for watching Funchal's houses tumble through the greenery down to the Atlantic, with a multipurpose space (concerts, conferences) and a cafeteria.

A small garden-lookout at 152 m on Estrada Dr. João Abel de Freitas, in the parish of Imaculado Coração de Maria, laid out in 2009 by the Funchal City Council. The view details the eastern part of the city — colourful roofs, vegetation-covered slope — in the natural amphitheatre facing the ocean. Cast-iron and wooden-slat benches, trees, shrubs, climbing plants and a lawn for a break in the shade.