Funchal spent its 15th-century sugar fortune on Flemish altarpieces, and they are still here — hung in a bishop's palace two streets from the harbour. Add convent tiles, a photographic studio open since 1865 and a working embroidery factory.
Flemish panels paid for in sugar hang in the old bishop's palace on Praça do Município: a Gerard David crucifixion, a Mabuse-school triptych, island church silver. Tue–Sat 10:00–12:30 and 14:30–18:00.
Finished in 1514 with a knotted-rope Manueline portal and a ceiling of Madeiran cedar inlaid with ivory in a mudéjar star pattern — cut before the island's laurel forests were logged. Free, daily 09:00–12:30 and 16:00–18:30.
Two brothers, one house: Francisco sculpted the bronze Zarco that stands on Avenida Arriaga, Henrique painted Madeiran fishermen and levada workers. Plaster maquettes, drawings and studio tools, Mon–Fri 10:00–18:00.
The 1629 Jesuit college, now University of Madeira, opens its church and cloisters on guided tours: floor-to-ceiling blue-and-white azulejo panels, gilded Baroque woodwork and the old apothecary's room.
Zarco's grandson's estate above the town, packed with furniture Madeiran carpenters built from broken cedar sugar crates, English silver and Chinese export porcelain. Archaeological garden of rescued Manueline window frames.
A former culture minister's lifetime of collecting crammed into a townhouse next door: theatre costumes, Venetian glass, African masks, signed portraits, all arranged by his own eccentric logic rather than by date.
Portugal's oldest surviving photographic studio, opened by Vicente Gomes da Silva in 1865 and reopened after restoration in 2023: painted backdrops, brass plate cameras and 800,000 glass negatives of Madeiran life.
An 1888 Italianate horseshoe auditorium on Avenida Arriaga, named for the blind 16th-century Madeiran playwright. Home season of the Orquestra Clássica da Madeira, plus fado nights and Portuguese-language drama.
A lawyer-collector's 17th-century mansion on Calçada de Santa Clara holding roughly a thousand azulejos — Hispano-Moresque, Delft, Portuguese Baroque — plus a tiled chapel and a room of Madeira-themed English prints.
Founded in 1497 by Zarco's son, its church floor and walls sheathed in geometric mudéjar tiles laid around 1500. Zarco's tomb sits behind the altar; a nun still shows visitors through the lower choir and cloister.
Built on the excavated cellar of the merchant house where Columbus lodged in Funchal: sugar moulds, Flemish altar panels traded for cane, and the ceramic conical forms that shaped the island's white gold.
A working embroidery factory on Rua Dr. Fernão de Ornelas where pattern-perforated paper is still pounced onto linen and sent out to home embroiderers across the island. Free walk-through of the design and finishing rooms.