Madeira Map: Every Sight, Pool and Trailhead We Cover, Pinned

What the five colours encode

Brown marks Funchal and Monte, the cluster you can cover without a car. Blue marks peaks, levadas and trailheads, all of them east or high on the central massif. Green marks the coast, the towns and the swimming pools, which ring the island.

Purple marks the trips out on the water, the whale watching, the Desertas and Porto Santo. Dark red marks arrival, the airport and its bus. Two pins sit outside their colour in spirit, and their notes say so: the São Vicente pin is green for the town because the caves are closed, and the canyoning pin is blue because that is where the boats and gear meet.

Why we colour by zone and not by category

A Madeira day is a zone, not a theme. You do not spend a day seeing museums, you spend a day on the north coast or on the ridge, because the mountain roads are slow and the weather changes by zone. Colouring by zone means the pins you could realistically join in one day share a colour.

That is also why we refuse to print drive times anywhere on this page. No official source publishes them for these roads, and a made-up number would quietly ruin your plan.

What the price on a pin means

The price is the official adult price from the operator, the council or the IFCN booking system, converted at €1 = $1.1481 and written dollar first. Where a child rate, a resident rate or a return fare exists, the pin or the linked page says so. Classified trails now cost $5.17 (€4.50) per trail for non-residents, or $12.06 (€10.50) for the full PR1 crossing, and every one needs a booked slot on SIMplifica even when the walker goes free.

Why some pins carry no price

Five pins carry no price because no official page publishes one. The CR7 Museum lists hours but no price we could read. Fanal publishes no entry fee, ticket or paid car park on any official page.

Calheta's municipal material charges a tourist tax but no beach entry price. The Achadas da Cruz cable car publishes fares but no hours. São Vicente is pinned for the town because the caves are closed indefinitely for maintenance.

When a pin has no price, the note in the pin tells you what we did and did not find.

What the pin numbers do

The pins are numbered in a deliberate order. Pins 1 to 11 run through Funchal and Monte, pins 12 to 20 cover the trails, pins 21 to 31 ring the coast, pins 32 to 34 go out on the water, and pin 35 is arrival. If you are building a first visit, the numbering is the shortest reading order for the island: city first, mountains second, coast third, sea trips when the days are long.

Funchal and the south

Funchal sits on the south coast in a natural amphitheatre, which is why the city climbs in terraces from the sea to Monte. It held 105,782 of the island's 250,744 residents in 2021, and it has been a city since 21 August 1508. Almost every route on this map starts or ends here, and the airport is 19.1 km east along the same coast.

The central massif

The spine of the island runs east to west with the three big summits: Pico Ruivo at 1,862 m, the highest point of the archipelago, Pico das Torres at 1,851 m and Pico do Areeiro at 1,818 m. From Areeiro on a clear day you can see Ponta de São Lourenço, Curral das Freiras and Porto Santo. Pico Ruivo is reachable only on foot.

The plateau and the north coast

The Paul da Serra plateau flattens the west of the island at high altitude, and Fanal sits at its forested edge at 1,135 m. The north coast below it has its own weather, greener and wetter than the south, which is why the pools at Porto Moniz and the black sand at Seixal can look grey when Funchal is blue. The towns of São Vicente, Santana and Porto Moniz all face this northern sea.

The eastern peninsula and the smaller islands

Ponta de São Lourenço at the east end is semi-arid and treeless, a different Madeira from the laurel forest, and PR8 crosses it in 4 km each way of bare ridge. Beyond it the Desertas Islands sit to the south-east, closed except by authorised boat. Porto Santo lies about 71 km to the north-east, with 9 km of sand and a ferry crossing that currently takes 3 hours 15 minutes.

The island divides into five practical zones for planning, and the count of pins from our map shows where the weight of a first visit falls. Read it as a packing order for days, not as a ranking of quality.

Pico Ruivo

The roof of the island at 1,862 m has no road. You reach it on PR1 from Pico do Areeiro, which is two-way only as far as the Pedra Rija viewpoint at km 1.2 and one-way from there to the summit, or on PR1.2 from Achada do Teixeira, which the IFCN trail board says 1h30 for. IFCN provides no return transport, so PR1 walkers finish by PR1.1 to Ilha or PR1.2 to Achada do Teixeira and need their own ride back.

The Caldeirão Verde waterfall

PR9 runs 8.7 km each way along the levada from Queimadas to a 110 m waterfall. The board time is 6h30 and the route passes four tunnels, so carry a torch. No vehicle gets closer than the Queimadas car park, and the trail fee of $5.17 (€4.50) needs a SIMplifica slot.

Cais do Sardinha and the end of PR8

The little harbour at the far end of the Ponta de São Lourenço peninsula sits at the end of a 4 km each way register trail with no shade and no trees. Boats sometimes call there, but on foot is the normal way, and the fee is $5.17 (€4.50).

Rabaçal

The road ER105 from Encumeada down to the Rabaçal forestry post is closed to traffic. The Calheta municipality shuttle covers the last stretch, about 2 km from the trailhead, at $5.74 (€5) one way or $9.18 (€8) return. Toilets are at the forestry post only.

The fajã under Achadas da Cruz

The cultivated shelf below the cliff on the north-west coast has no road. The small cable car drops to it for $5.74 (€5) return, and no official page publishes the operating hours, so go with flexibility.

The Desertas Islands

The island chain south-east of Madeira is a strict nature reserve. Landing needs IFCN authorisation requested on SIMplifica, there is no public ferry, and the catamaran trips that approach the islands are booked commercially.

No restaurants, bars or hotels

This map pins no place to eat or sleep. Naming a venue needs a citable list or the venue's own site, and a pin is a promise of a fact. Those choices live on where to eat and where to stay, where we can carry prices and opening hours properly.

The eighty-plus miradouros

Visit Madeira lists more than eighty viewpoints across the island. Pinning them all would bury the sights that cost money and close at hours. They have their own page at Madeira viewpoints, organised by zone in the same way as this map.

The classified trails themselves

The map pins trailheads, not trails. All forty-odd recommended routes, with their board times, lengths and the closed entries on the IFCN register, sit on hikes. The fee and booking rules are on Madeira trail fees.

Canyoning, which has no fixed site

Canyoning happens in streams and gullies, not at an address. The listed trip meets after the road tunnel into the Curral das Freiras valley, so the pin is approximate by design. The activity is described on canyoning in Madeira.

Beach entry prices nobody publishes

Most municipal beaches are free and the pins say so. But for some stretches, such as Calheta, no municipal page we read publishes a beach entry price at all, and we say that on the pin instead of inventing a number.

Drive times

No official source publishes drive times for the roads to Pico do Areeiro, Porto Moniz, Rabaçal, Santana or Caniçal, so this page prints none. Plan in zones and allow the whole day for a north or west coast run, our estimate. For buses and taxis that do publish times and fares, see getting around Madeira.

The São Vicente caves

The pin at São Vicente marks the town, because the caves and volcanism centre are closed indefinitely for maintenance works. We will not send you to a shut door, and the note on the pin says what to do instead.

Pool hours move

The Porto Moniz natural pools open 09:00-17:00 in winter and 09:00-19:00 in summer. The free Clube Naval pools at Seixal run 10:00-19:00. A north coast swimming day in the short-hours season needs an earlier start, our estimate.

Monte Palace closes earlier

Monte Palace Tropical Garden runs 09:00-19:00 from April to September and 09:00-18:00 from October to March, with last entry at 17:00 and closure on 25 December. The cable car's published hours, 08:45-17:45, bind the whole Monte day, since the toboggan also stops at 18:00 and does not run on Sundays or public holidays.

The ferry fare drops

The Porto Santo ferry costs $82.70 (€72.02) return for a visitor adult from April to September and $67.60 (€58.90) in the other months, plus the monthly fuel surcharge. The September timetable has no Friday morning sailing, and the crossing currently takes 3 hours 15 minutes.

Sunrise slides by more than an hour

At the Pico do Areeiro coordinates, our computation puts sunrise at 06:59 in June and 08:11 in October, with September at 07:50. Cloud decides whether you see any of it, which no table fixes.

The coast normals, and what they do not cover

IPMA normals for the Funchal coast station give 1.7 mm of rain in July against 94.8 mm in December, and mean daily maxima of 26.8°C in August and 20.0°C in January. These are coast figures only. The peaks are colder and wetter and IPMA publishes no normal for them here, so dress for a different zone above 1,500 m.

Works windows on PR1

IFCN closes sections of PR1 for announced works, as it did on 14-17 and 21-22 September 2026 for the Pedra Rija to Pico Ruivo stretch. The trail has been open every day since 26 June 2026. Check the IFCN notices for your own date before you book a slot, because rain, illness or a missed bus lose the fee, and refunds apply only when IFCN closes the trail on the booking date.