São Vicente, Madeira: The North Coast Town and Its Closed Caves

The closure, straight from the source

The São Vicente Caves and Volcanism Centre are closed for an indefinite period for maintenance works. That wording comes from the operator's own website, and the Câmara Municipal de São Vicente says the same. No reopening date has been published on either page.

The centre is run by Naturnorte, a municipal company of the Câmara Municipal de São Vicente, and its address is Sítio do Pé do Passo, N.º 2, São Vicente, telephone 291 842 404. In practice this means you cannot buy a ticket, book a slot or walk the underground trail, and no amount of planning changes that until the operator says otherwise.

Do not buy from the old domain

The old domain grutasecentrodovulcanismo.com no longer belongs to the caves. It serves unrelated content. If a site on that address or anything similar offers you São Vicente cave tickets, do not pay it.

The only address that matters while the closure lasts is the operator's current site, and right now that site sells nothing because there is nothing to sell.

What the caves are, and why they were worth the trip

Per Visit Madeira, the caves formed from a volcanic eruption in Paul da Serra about 890 thousand years ago, and visitors could explore them along an underground trail about 700 metres long. That was the deal: a lava tube under the town, a volcanism centre above it, and a guided route through both. None of that is on offer today.

When the operator announces a reopening, this page will say so, and until then any sentence you read elsewhere saying you can enter the caves is out of date.

What to do instead

Three honest options. Stay in town for the free chapel in the rock and the old centre. Swim at the Ponta Delgada bathing complex in the same municipality.

Or treat the north coast as the attraction, which is what the jeep tours do, running the coast road west to Seixal and Porto Moniz. For a rainy day on the island generally, our rainy day in Madeira list has other indoor options, though we cannot claim the caves are one of them at the moment.

The chapel in the rock

The São Vicente (Calhau) chapel is the town's signature sight. Visit Madeira describes it officially as a small and peculiar chapel built inside a basalt rock, by the sea. It sits at the mouth of the valley where the stream meets the Atlantic, and it is free to see from the outside as part of any walk along the seafront.

There is no ticket, no counter and no published visiting hours for the building itself in our sources.

The old centre and the seafront

Walking the old centre and the seafront is free, and with roughly 6,000 inhabitants the municipality is small enough to cross on foot in minutes. The town sits in a steep valley, which is the thing you notice first when the bus drops you off: houses climb the walls on both sides while the road follows the water down to the ocean.

Surf and bodyboard beaches

The north coast beaches here are used for surf and bodyboarding, per Visit Madeira. That tells you what kind of beach this is: open Atlantic, not a calm bathing bay. For sheltered swimming the better bet in this municipality is the saltwater pool complex at Ponta Delgada in the same municipality.

For more swimming spots along the same coast, see our Madeira beaches page.

The tourist office

The Posto de Turismo de São Vicente sits at Largo do Município, nº2, 9240-225 São Vicente. It opens 09:00-12:30 and 14:00-17:30 and the phone is (+351) 291 840 020. This is where you confirm anything the municipality has not published online, including the current entry price and hours of the Ponta Delgada bathing complex, which no official page lists.

What the sources do not cover

We will not name restaurants, cafés, bars or hotels, because our facts file does not review any of them for this town. If you are staying rather than passing through, our where to stay page covers the island's areas without naming or pricing individual properties, and where to eat in Madeira does the same for food.

Ponta Delgada bathing complex

The Complexo Balnear da Ponta Delgada is a paid-access facility next to the parish's mother church. It has two saltwater pools, one for children and one for adults, both with a water treatment system, plus a sunbathing area, a bar and terrace, changing rooms, first aid and parking. That is the full official description from Visit Madeira.

What is missing matters too: no official price and no official opening hours are published on visitmadeira.com or on cm-saovicente.pt. Do not trust a euro figure from a blog. Call the municipality on (+351) 291 840 020 for the current numbers.

Boaventura and PR2 Vereda do Urzal

Boaventura is one of the municipality's three parishes, and the IFCN trail register lists PR2 Vereda do Urzal as a 10.3 km route from Curral das Freiras to Boaventura, open. The route ends in the parish, so a fit walker can arrive in São Vicente municipality on foot from the south. It is a classified IFCN trail, so non-resident visitors pay the trail fee and book a slot: one classified trail is $5.17 (€4.50) per person, the details are on our Madeira trail fees page.

Residents and children 12 and under walk free but must book. From the reopened PR1.3 section at Boca das Torrinhas, the IFCN notice says walkers can continue on PR2 toward Curral das Freiras or Boaventura, which makes this a genuine long-option route into the north coast.

The municipality in numbers

Around 6,000 people live in the municipality across 78.70 km², in the parishes of Boaventura, Ponta Delgada and São Vicente. Those are the official figures from Visit Madeira. There is nothing more in the official sources about Boaventura's attractions or facilities, and we would rather say that plainly than pad the section.

The options compared

The table below lists each way of reaching town, what the operator or official source publishes about it, and the cost where one is stated. Bus fares are Rodoeste's on-board single fares for Funchal routes. No official source gives a journey time for any of these options, so none is printed here.

One road note that matters for hikers

If your plan combines São Vicente with the Rabaçal levadas, note that the Câmara Municipal da Calheta states the ER105 between Encumeada and Rabaçal is closed to traffic. Drivers are routed via Ribeira Brava, Ponta do Sol and Calheta instead, and the municipality runs a shuttle to the Posto Florestal do Rabaçal at $5.74 (€5) one way or $9.18 (€8) return. That is a Rabaçal problem, not a São Vicente one, but the two places share the Encumeada road and many itineraries share the same day.

The municipal calendar

The table lists each festival named on the official municipal calendar and the recurring pattern the municipality gives for it. For island-wide happenings beyond this municipality, our Madeira events page collects the rest.

The list

Five points, each with the source it comes from, because a fact without a source is just a rumour with better posture.

• The caves were born on the other side of the island. They formed from an eruption in Paul da Serra about 890 thousand years ago, so the lava flowed from the plateau before it became the tube visitors once walked. Source: Visit Madeira.
• The old caves domain is gone. Grutasecentrodovulcanismo.com no longer belongs to the caves and serves unrelated content, so any ticket sold there is not a cave ticket. Source: the Câmara Municipal de São Vicente and the operator.
• The municipality's festival calendar is pattern-based, not date-based. The main Festas de São Vicente are defined as the week before and including the last Sunday of August, and no year-specific dates are published. Source: the municipal calendar.
• A hiker can walk into the municipality from Curral das Freiras. PR2 Vereda do Urzal runs 10.3 km from Curral das Freiras to Boaventura and is open, making it one of the few trails that ends on the north coast. Source: the IFCN trail register.
• One viewpoint sees both of its valleys. The Boca da Encumeada viewpoint stands at 1,007 m and looks over the Ribeira Brava and São Vicente valleys at the same time, which is the cleanest explanation of why the road south crosses where it does. Source: Visit Madeira's Ribeira Brava page.

Three routings

The table sets out three ways to spend time in and around São Vicente, what each involves, and how long we think it takes. The cave visit is absent from every row because it cannot be part of any plan while the closure lasts.

The honest shape of a São Vicente day starts with accepting the closure. If you are driving the north coast, give the town a stop of one to two hours by our estimate: park near the seafront, walk to the chapel in the rock, cross the old centre, and continue west to Seixal and Porto Moniz. The Madeira towns hub can supply the other stops if you are stitching your own route. If you are on a guided day, the north coast jeep tours in the listings cross this coast on the way to the west, and all four run 8 hours per their operators.

A slower day works too. Put the swimming at Ponta Delgada in the afternoon, since the complex has two saltwater pools, a sunbathing area, a bar, changing rooms, first aid and parking, and confirm the price and hours with the municipality first because they publish neither. Add a festival if the calendar lines up, the main Festas de São Vicente running the week before and including the last Sunday of August. What does not work is basing the day on the caves, and we would rather tell you that on this page than have you discover it at the gate on Sítio do Pé do Passo.