The cedar ceiling
Moorish-souled geometry over the Atlantic.
Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dietmar Rabich — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dietmar Rabich — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dietmar Rabich — CC BY-SA 4.0
Before the Gulf and Brazil there was Madeira's white gold: the island was Atlantic Europe's first cane plantation (15th century), its sugar buying Flanders' art and the churches' gold — until Brazil outgrew it and it turned to the wine that bears its name. The Sé's Flemish panels are that era's hanging receipts.
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Funchal's Sé is the Age of Discoveries' oldest surviving daughter: a 1514 cathedral Manuel I raised for the newly found island — Portugal's first cathedral beyond mainland Europe, still working as begun, behind an austere white front crowned by a pyramid-tiled tower. Its treasure hangs overhead: the Mudéjar wooden ceiling of island cedar and ivory — among the finest Moorish-souled geometric ceilings outside Iberia — with a gilded altarpiece and Flemish paintings the merchants gave when Madeira's sugar bought Europe. Its half-hour falls mid-centre-walk by course (the Aljube shopping street is its door) — and keep the head raised: the whole story is in the ceiling.
Moorish-souled geometry over the Atlantic.
An altar Madeira's European sugar funded.
Rua do Aljube 23, 9000-018 Funchal