What to See in Madeira, Portugal: Free Audio Guide

Madeira is a Portuguese Atlantic island known for dramatic coastlines, historic towns and a rich cultural heritage. The island is worth exploring for its churches, forts, museums and viewpoints, from Funchal’s waterfront to the coastal towns of Machico, Ribeira Brava and Câmara de Lobos. Neywo offers a free audio guide for Madeira with 164 narrated places.

What to See in Madeira

The island’s most important sights range from early religious buildings and coastal defenses to museums that tell the story of Madeira’s people, landscapes and traditions.

Igreja de São Lourenço

Also known as Igreja Paroquial da Camacha, Igreja de São Lourenço is a church in Santa Cruz. It offers an opportunity to discover the religious heritage of one of Madeira’s municipalities beyond Funchal.

Forte de São José

At the end of Funchal’s harbor, Forte de São José occupies the rocky Ilhéu de São José. The small fort can also be called Forte São José, Forte do Ilhéu, Forte da Pontinha or Bateria da Pontinha.

Stairs from the breakwater, via Pontinha Road, lead to the site. The fort was long overlooked as part of Madeira’s historical, architectural and cultural heritage. More recently, its private owner has worked to revive it and has argued that the location may contain Madeira’s first fortification, dating from the period of the island’s discovery.

Forte de São José is one of the stops on Neywo’s Funchal tour, “Ronaldo, Royalty and the Waterfront.”

Cristo Rei

The Cristo Rei statue stands on a rocky promontory at Ponta do Garajau. Also known as the Sacred Heart statue, it is an Art Deco monument to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Cristo Rei was inaugurated on 30 October 1927. The monument was financed by the lawyer Aires de Ornelas and his wife and created by the French sculptor Serraz Georges. Its elevated coastal position gives the statue a strong presence above the shoreline.

Forte dos Louros

Forte dos Louros is a small fort in the Louros area of São Gonçalo, in Funchal. It overlooks a cove and the mouth of the Gonçalo Aires stream. The site is also referred to as Forte de Loures, and its position helps explain the role coastal geography played in Madeira’s defensive history.

Cathedral of Funchal

The Sé Cathedral, or Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, is the mother church of the Diocese of Funchal and one of Madeira’s most important religious landmarks.

Completed in 1514, it is one of the few buildings on the island to survive virtually intact from Madeira’s early period of colonization. The cathedral is a late Gothic church with relatively few Manueline features, reflecting the period of King Manuel I. Construction was supervised by the stonemason Gil Eanes and the carpenter Péro Annes. Bishop Lobo dedicated the church in 1508, and it became a cathedral on 12 June 1514, when Funchal was established as Portugal’s third bishop’s seat. The present high altar and choir were consecrated on 18 October 1517.

The cathedral features on Neywo’s “Sugar, Saints and the Yellow Fort” walk through Funchal.

Forte de Nossa Senhora do Amparo

Beside the anchorage in Machico, Forte de Nossa Senhora do Amparo recalls the defenses built to protect the town and its bay. It is also known as Forte de Santo Amaro.

Built in the eighteenth century, the small fortress was designed to defend Machico against attacks by pirates and privateers. Its position beside the anchorage reveals the strategic importance of the bay.

Forte de São Bento da Ribeira Brava

Forte de São Bento is one of Ribeira Brava’s most distinctive waterfront landmarks. Commissioned in 1708 by Duarte Sodré Pereira, Governor of Madeira, it was built to protect the settlement and its anchorage at a time when pirate and corsair attacks threatened coastal communities.

The compact fort has a circular form, a stone base, a projecting band and an upper section in cement masonry finished with incised lines that imitate stonework. A battlemented terrace and watch turret crown the structure. On the north-facing façade, a round-arched doorway is topped by an inscription and the national arms. A small niche on the sea-facing side contains an image of Saint Benedict.

The fort later served a different purpose: in 1920, it was leased to the Municipal Council and used as a prison.

Madeira Ethnographic Museum

The Madeira Ethnographic Museum in Ribeira Brava explores the ethnography of the Madeira archipelago. It occupies a former sixteenth-century manor house that was later converted into an industrial facility with a mill for grinding sugar cane.

After rehabilitation by the Regional Government, the building opened as a museum on 15 June 1996. The property was once connected with the Convent of Santa Clara in Funchal and was later acquired by Luís Gonçalves da Silva, captain of the Ribeira Brava militia. In 1710, he enlarged the residence by adding another floor and ordered a chapel dedicated to Saint Joseph on its southern side. The chapel portal remains incorporated into the building, which became known as the Solar de São José.

CR7 Museum

The CR7 Museum in Funchal is devoted to the football career of Cristiano Ronaldo. Its exhibits include trophies, photographs, videos, personal highlights and a wax statue.

The museum opened on 15 December 2013, with Cristiano Ronaldo and his son taking part in the inauguration. Its original collection contained 126 trophies. In 2016, the museum moved to its current location in Praça do Mar and expanded from 400 square metres to 1,400 square metres within a hotel created through a partnership between Ronaldo and the Pestana Group.

The collection represents trophies won with Andorinha, Nacional, Sporting, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus and the Portuguese national team. The museum also preserves the Portuguese-pavement floor used in its original location, complete with the museum’s logo.

Casa-Museu Frederico de Freitas

Casa-Museu Frederico de Freitas is a mansion and museum in Funchal. It houses the art collection of Frederico de Freitas, a lawyer and notary from Madeira who lived in the house for several decades.

Born in 1894 and deceased in 1978, Frederico de Freitas left his estate to the Autonomous Region of Madeira. The house and collection consequently became part of the island’s cultural heritage.

Palácio de São Pedro and the Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum of Funchal is housed in the Palácio de São Pedro, a notable example of Portuguese civil architecture and the oldest museum in the Madeira archipelago.

The museum already existed as the Museu Regional da Madeira in 1929 and was officially inaugurated as the Museu Municipal do Funchal on 5 October 1933. The Palácio de São Pedro dates from the late seventeenth century and stands on Rua da Mouraria. Its historic setting brings together the natural history of Madeira and one of Funchal’s notable palaces.

Largo da Igrejinha and the Madeira Photography Museum

Largo da Igrejinha provides a starting point for discovering the Madeira Photography Museum, also known as the Vicentes Photography Museum. The museum occupies a former photographic studio connected with the history of the Vicente family.

In 1848, Vicente Gomes da Silva founded what is considered the oldest existing photographic studio in Portugal. Since 1982, the former studio has also operated as a house museum. Its collection includes original cameras, photographic equipment and tools for developing, trimming and assembling photographs. The archive contains around 800,000 negatives, offering a visual record of Funchal and Madeira.

Madeira Optics Museum

The Madeira Optics Museum presents a permanent collection of devices and objects connected with the development of optics. It opened on 7 September 2017 and offers a focused museum experience among Funchal’s cultural attractions.

Madeira Printing Press Museum

The Madeira Printing Press Museum in Câmara de Lobos documents the typographic, lithographic and cinematographic heritage of Madeira’s press. Opened in 2013, it occupies the same building as the Câmara de Lobos Municipal Library.

The 2,000-square-metre museum contains around 40 machines and original equipment from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Notable objects include a manual printing press made by Golding and Company of Boston in 1886, an Intertype machine made in England in 1911 and a rotary printing press described as unique in Madeira’s press history.

Madeira Story Centre

In Funchal’s Zona Velha, the Madeira Story Centre presents the island’s natural origins, history and culture in an interactive format. Its narrative begins with the archipelago’s volcanic formation and continues through Madeira’s flora and fauna, settlement in the fifteenth century and the Age of Discoveries.

The museum also covers later history, pirate attacks and the era of seaplanes. It is one of the stops on Neywo’s “Sugar, Saints and the Yellow Fort” walk.

Explore Madeira with Neywo’s Free Audio Guide

A Madeira self-guided walking tour lets you discover the island’s stories at your own pace. Neywo has four walking tours and one bus route in Madeira, with narration available in 11 languages:

• “Sugar, Saints and the Yellow Fort”: 2.1 km, 93 minutes and 12 narrated stops.
• “Ronaldo, Royalty and the Waterfront”: 2.65 km, 101 minutes and 12 narrated stops.
• “Convents, Quintas and Museum Mansions”: 2.45 km, 95 minutes and 12 narrated stops.
• “Monte: Gardens in the Clouds”: 2.84 km, 71 minutes and 6 narrated stops.
• “Line 5: Funchal’s museum line”: a 4.6 km bus route lasting 20 minutes, with 9 narrated stops.

The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, at your own pace, with no group and no schedule. Download Neywo and explore Madeira independently, from its historic center and waterfront to its museums, churches and coastal forts.