An economy on slopes
The terraces and irrigation channels that made farming possible on a very steep mountain.
Paulo SP/ Wikimedia — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Paulo SP/ Wikimedia — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Paulo SP/ Wikimedia — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Paulo SP/ Wikimedia — CC BY-SA 4.0
Narrow irrigation channels carrying water from the rainy north to the dry south across the mountain, some cut from the sixteenth century by hard and dangerous labour. Today their maintenance paths are used for walking and have become the island's best-known activity, but their origin is purely agricultural — and the museum explains it.
By car about twenty-five minutes from Funchal on the motorway, or by public bus which takes longer. There is no direct tourist transport, so fit it into a day heading west towards Cabo Girão or Porto Moniz.
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A museum about everyday life in Madeira before tourism, in a seventeenth-century house in the town of Ribeira Brava on the south coast. The subject is what makes it useful: the island you see today as hotels and walking trails was a hard agricultural economy built on sugar cane and then wine and bananas, on steep slopes that demanded terraces and irrigation channels. The museum explains how people lived inside that. Sections cover fishing, wickerwork, winemaking and embroidery — a famous Madeiran craft exported for decades — along with farming tools and household furniture. It also holds a working model of a sugar cane press. The location is in Ribeira Brava rather than Funchal, about fifteen kilometres west. The town itself is quiet and worth a stop, and the coast road there is beautiful. Combine it with a trip west rather than treating it as a standalone visit from Funchal.
The terraces and irrigation channels that made farming possible on a very steep mountain.
A craft exported for decades and among the island's main sources of income.
The coast road is beautiful and the town quiet — not a standalone trip from Funchal.
Ribeira Brava, about fifteen kilometres west of Funchal