Madeira Holidays

When to visit

Madeira Islands, known worldwide as the Islands of eternal spring, are just a short trip from Europe (more or less 4 hours from UK), to a destination where you can combine holidays on the beach, in the mountains or in the city and offers a mild climate throughout the entire year. Discovered early in the 15th century by the Portuguese navigators Joo Gonalves Zarco, Tristo Vaz Teixeira and Bartolomeu Perestrelo, Madeira is an autonomous region of Portugal.

Things to do

Today, Madeira is a popular year–round resort for tourists of all ages, being visited every year by about one million tourists, noted for its Madeira wine, flowers, landscapes and embroidery artisans, as well for its annual New Years celebrations that feature the largest fireworks show in the world. Its constant mild climate (temperatures between 20 and 27C) keeps the spring on Madeira all year round. The levadas, an ingenious system of stone– and concrete–lined watercourses distributing water from the rainy north to the dry south, help flowers and crops flourish all year. That's why this island is called the Garden in the Atlantic. The maintenance pathways for these water canals provide wonderful level trails for hiking in the mountains (up to 1861m) and through the tremendous landscape.

Madeira Wine

It would be difficult not to mention Madeira Wine, given its worldwide popularity. Madeira is a fortified Portuguese wine, produced in the Madeira Islands; varieties may be sweet or dry. It has a history dating back to the Age of Exploration when Madeira was a standard port of call for ships heading to the New World or East Indies. To prevent the wine from spoiling, neutral grape spirits were added. However, wine producers of Madeira discovered, when an unsold shipment of wine returned to the islands after a round trip, that the flavour of the wine had been transformed by exposure to heat and movement. Today, Madeira is noted for its unique winemaking process which involves heating the wine and deliberately exposing the wine to some levels of oxidation.[50] Most countries limit the use of the term Madeira or Madre to only those wines that come from the Madeira Islands, to which the European Union grants Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status