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Porto Santo

Two ways: the Porto Santo Line ferry from Funchal, a 2 hr 30 min crossing, or a flight to Porto Santo airport (PXO), which takes flights from Funchal and, in season, from Lisbon.

The Lobo Marinho is 112 m long, carries 1,153 passengers and 145 vehicles and makes 21 knots. On board there is a cinema (the screening starts ten minutes after departure), a self-service restaurant, a children's room, a games room, bars, a first-class lounge, a solarium and a shop.

Fares change with the season and the day: check them on portosantoline.pt, where you also book the crossing. In summer, book the return trip early.

Porto Santo airport, code PXO, sits at Campo de Cima about 2 km from Vila Baleira. It opened on 28 August 1960 and was the first in the archipelago; its concrete runway of 3,006 m is one of the longest in Portugal and also serves as a diversion field.

Taxis run day and night, buses cover the island, and cars, bikes and scooters can be hired. The island is 11.4 km by 6, so nothing is far. Vila Baleira itself is walkable: about 15 minutes from the town to the beach.

Yes. SIGA has served Calheta since July 2024. A cycle path of about 5 km also runs along the ER 111 between Ribeiro Cochino and Calheta.

One day is enough to cross the island; five let you walk all three classified trails, see both coasts and take your time on the beach. The itineraries run from one day to five, to suit your mood: hiker, relaxation, adventure, family or discovery.

Yes, Porto Santo applies a municipal tourist tax, collected by your accommodation. Ask your accommodation or the town hall for the current amount.

Count on about 120 to 250 € a day for two in comfort: 60 to 150 € a hotel night, 15 to 35 € a meal, 5 to 15 € a day for bus or bike, 35 to 60 € an activity. The classified trails cost €4.50 a person; for the rest, prices are each place's own.

112, for police, ambulance and fire. The numbers of the health centre, the GNR, the ferry company and the airport are under « Emergencies and contacts ».

All the island's drinking water is desalinated: the plant, opened in 1980, draws sea water through galleries under the beach, treats it by reverse osmosis and remineralises it. It is expensive to produce, so please do not waste it.

Strong enough that the practical tips open on it: SPF 50+, even on cloudy days. The island has 63.6 days a year reaching 25 °C or more, almost all of them between July and October, and very little shade outside the planted woods.

July to September for the beach: 22 to 23 °C on average, almost no rain, a sea at 22 to 23.5 °C. October and November are still warm (19 to 21 °C) with the sea at 21 to 23 °C, but the rain returns. December to March is the season for walking and sand cures: 16 °C, the wettest and windiest months.

Mild all year: 19.1 °C mean annual temperature, 21.6 °C mean maximum, 16.5 °C mean minimum, and 381.7 mm of rain over 61.6 days. The gap between the coldest and the warmest month is only 7.3 °C.

Not in summer. July gets 4.1 mm and August 4.4 mm — a day and a half of rain between them. November and December are the wettest, with 63.5 and 62.5 mm. Over the year, 61.6 days get at least 1 mm but only 1.4 get 30 mm or more: when it rains here, it usually rains little and briefly.

In August and September, yes: 22.8 nights in August and 17.1 in September stay above 20 °C. Over the year there are 57.2 such nights. Going past 30 °C by day stays rare — 0.6 days a year on average.

35.0 °C, on 29 July 2007, over the 1991-2020 period. The previous normals recorded 35.3 °C on 6 August 1990 and a low of 6.4 °C on 14 February 1981. Snow fell once, on 4 February 1860.

Three classified PS PR trails: PS PR1 Vereda do Pico Branco e Terra Chã (2.7 km, +266 m), PS PR2 Vereda do Pico do Castelo (4.6 km, +210 m) and PS PR3 Levada do Pico do Castelo (4.1 km, +130 m).

Yes. Since 1 January 2026 you book a 30-minute slot on SIMplifica: €4.50 a person, free for residents and for children up to 12.

It changes. The IFCN publishes the status of the three PS PR trails and the app reads it every day: it is shown in three colours on each trail's card and in the Trails section, with the IFCN notice word for word. Check it before setting out.

A Levada is a water channel dug to carry water across the land, and the path that runs beside it. Porto Santo has one classified trail along a Levada: PS PR3, the Levada do Pico do Castelo, a twentieth-century channel.

Pico do Facho, 517 m. It belongs, with Pico de Juliana, to the island's most recent volcanic units, about 10.6 million years old, and no road reaches it: the PS PR2 trail runs along its base. Behind it come Gandaia 484 m, Pico Branco 450 m, Juliana 439 m and Castelo 437 m.

All year, but December to March is the walking season: 16 °C on average, and the summer heat gone. Give up in heavy rain or strong wind — the IFCN asks for it, and the peaks are windy even in fine weather.

Eight built viewpoints, plus the island's eight peaks: enough to see the bay, the islets and both coasts from above. The easiest to reach: the Portela above the town and Pico do Castelo, with its road to the top.

The whole island has been a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 28 October 2020, the twelfth in Portugal. The nomination was submitted in September 2019 and an action plan for 2020-2025 goes with it. The islets are also a Natura 2000 site and part of the marine protected area network created in 2008.

Not without prior authorisation from the IFCN. The six islets are inside the Natura 2000 site and the marine protected area network. Boat trips that sail round them do not land.

Between 14 and 18 million years, depending on whether you count from the first lavas under the sea or from the moment the island surfaced. Each peak has its own age: 13.8 million years for Pico do Castelo, 12.5 to 12.7 for Pico de Ana Ferreira, 10.6 for Pico do Facho. The island is older than Madeira.

Because it is not volcanic but calcareous: crushed shells, corals and calcareous algae, with a few dark grains of volcanic origin. It comes from the erosion of the dune sandstones — dune sandstones — that still cover about a third of the island and reach over 40 m thick at Fonte da Areia.

Ten listed geological sites: the beach, Zimbralinho, Morenos, Pico de Ana Ferreira and its « Piano », Serra de Dentro, Pico da Cabrita, Fonte da Areia, and three on the islets — Pedra do Sol, Cabeço das Laranjas and Ilhéu da Cal.

Yes. The island counts about 536 taxa, 15 of them exclusive to Porto Santo, 28 endemic to Madeira and 26 to Macaronesia. The Pico Branco – Terra Chã special area of conservation alone holds 247 taxa and 7 plants found only here. The zimbreiro, a juniper once common, now survives in the wild only on the north-eastern escarpments of Pico Branco.

The LIFE DUNAS project ran for five years, from 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2025, coordinated by the regional Secretariat for the Environment with the municipality, the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, the IFCN and two other bodies. The reason: by the end of the century mean sea level could rise 9 mm a year, and the dune belt protects people and property.

The red palm weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, reached Porto Santo in October 2023. Its larvae tunnel inside the trunk for one to three months and destroy the tree from within. The municipality runs the SOS Palmeiras programme and sets traps. Do not move palm fronds, trunks or soil around the island.

Nine kilometres, along the south coast, from Penedo next to the harbour to Calheta in the south-west. From east to west it takes the names Penedo, Fontinha, Pedras Pretas, Ribeiro Cochino, Ribeiro Salgado, Cabeço da Ponta and Calheta. A dune belt of about 7 km runs behind it.

Three fly the 2026 Blue Flag and are the only ones with guaranteed lifeguards: Fontinha and Cabeço da Ponta from 15 May to 31 October, Ribeiro Salgado from 1 May to 31 October. Everywhere else, follow the flags.

From about 18 °C in March to 23.5 °C in September: the sea is warmest a month after the air. On the beaches, in high summer, it reaches 24–25 °C.

An island tradition: burying yourself in the hot sand, between beach and dune, to relieve joints and rheumatism. In summer the sand reaches 65 °C at the surface; a centre on the island also offers tub baths, under medical advice.

Diving on two wrecks, snorkelling from the beach, boat trips and dolphins, kayaking, stand-up paddle, jet ski, surfing, windsurfing and kitesurfing: the sea is calm and clear almost all year.

Yes, at Porto das Salemas on the north coast: a hard-to-reach corner that reveals turquoise rock pools at low tide. It marks the mouth of the Ribeira do Perril, in more than 15-million-year-old rock formed under water.

Away from the great beach: Zimbralinho and Porto das Salemas on the wild coast, Praia do Cotrim, Praia do Gastão and Praia do Furado on the east coast, and Calhau da Serra de Dentro in the north-east. None of them is guarded and several take real effort to reach.

Start with what exists only here: the island's own bolo do caco, escarpiada, gaiado seco, the wine from Listrão and Caracol grapes, and Lambecas ice cream. Then the table of the whole archipelago: espetada, limpets, milho frito, poncha.

Yes. It is said to have been born in Porto Santo, as a way of using leftover dough, and the island's version is taller and wider than Madeira's — with no sweet potato.

Yes, white, from the Listrão and Caracol grapes grown on calcareous sand. Vine growing was revived by a royal charter of 13 October 1770, which had cuttings distributed for the sands of the central plain. The harvest is celebrated at the Festa das Vindimas at the end of August.

Cane spirit, honey or sugar and lemon, beaten with a wooden mexelote. It is the drink of the archipelago, born at Câmara de Lobos on Madeira, and served in the poncha bars of Vila Baleira.

From the mountain grills of Serra de Fora to the beach terraces, by way of the poncha bars of Vila Baleira and the ice creams by the harbour: the island's addresses are coming soon in the app.

The island's ice creams, with more than fifty years of history behind them. They are the most emblematic ice creams of Porto Santo, and there is a Festa das Lambecas in July.

Under rules. Regional law sets a minimum size of 40 mm, a closed season from 1 December to 31 March and a limit of 3 kg a day per person without a licence, and it forbids gathering by diving inside the marine reserve.

Tradition points to a house in the centre of town, now the Casa Colombo museum, as his residence after his marriage to Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, celebrated in Lisbon between 1479 and 1480. Filipa was the daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrelo, the island's first captain-donatary. The museum states this as tradition, not as proof.

Two official dates coexist. The municipality holds 1418, when Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira landed, and celebrated the 600th anniversary on 1 November 2018. The Casa Colombo museum dates the Portuguese arrival from June 1420, after the siege of Ceuta was lifted in October 1419. Neither is discarded here.

From a shelter found in a storm — on that both theories agree. The popular one has Zarco and his companions naming the island in 1418 out of gratitude. The documented one places a ship finding safe harbour in the late Middle Ages, so that the island was already called Porto Santo before the Portuguese arrived: it appears on portolans from Angelino Dulcert's chart of about 1339 onwards.

Repeatedly, by Algerian pirates and English and French corsairs. In 1617 they killed every man they could catch and carried off a large part of the women. Pico do Castelo takes its name from the fifteenth-century fort the population fled to, and the Forte de São José guarded the town's anchorage.

Because the original vegetation was destroyed and the farming that followed exhausted the soil, which lost its fertility and left the gullies you see all over the island. A royal charter of October 1770 obliged farmers to plant trees, and soon after cutting a tree — even a dead one — was forbidden. Real afforestation began in 1918-1921 under the forestry regent Schiappa de Azevedo and resumed from 1955.

On 6 August 1996, by regional legislative decree 18/96/M. The municipality had been created in 1835, after a charter of donation granted to Bartolomeu Perestrelo on 1 November 1446. City Day is celebrated on 7 August; 2026 marked the thirtieth anniversary.

For centuries the island lived off it. Limestone was quarried in galleries on Ilhéu da Cal — which is where the islet's name comes from — and burnt in kilns like the one still standing behind the beach. The work was dangerous: one collapse buried sixteen men at once. The activity, recorded from 1600, lasted until the 1970s.

Petroleum lamps lit the main streets from 1931; electricity replaced them in 1954, the same year piped drinking water reached homes. A radio-telegraph station had ended the island's complete isolation in 1929; the first telephone link with Madeira came on 27 August 1959.

Because water was the island's great constraint. Settlement began around 1420 and ran into long droughts; the municipality had fountains built, fed by the existing springs. They were also where people met: filling two tins took two to three hours, and the women used the time to talk and embroider while paid carriers took the water home.

Because the island is low and the wind blows on most days from several quarters — ideal conditions. The island's first windmill is thought to date from 1794; within a few decades they had spread far enough to become one of the island's emblems. Three at Portela were restored and reopened in 2023.

A house roofed with salão, the green clay of Serra de Dentro, before ceramic tiles arrived. That clay is unique in Portugal: it comes from the weathering of the undersea volcanic rocks of the island's submarine phase and is a listed geosite.

Two. The Casa Colombo – Museu do Porto Santo e dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, created in 1989, restructured in 2004 around the island's strategic position in Portugal's opening to the world, and enlarged in 2023. And the Museu Etnográfico Cardina at Camacha, opened in 2006, on rural life.

The municipality publishes two cultural routes with their maps, in Portuguese and English: the Rota do Património, which leads to the historic centre, and the Cultural Itinerary of religious heritage, which links the chapels and the parish church.

Yes: "Canção da Terra", by Jorge Brum do Canto, 1938, set on Porto Santo and telling the story of a people and their fight for the water they lacked. A fountain in the town centre carries the film's name.

About 42 km², 11.4 km long by 6 wide: 6 % of the surface of Madeira island, for roughly 1.9 % of the Region's population and a little over 5,000 inhabitants.

One municipality with a single parish. Vila Baleira is the only town and the seat of the council; everywhere else is a sítio — Camacha, Campo de Baixo, Campo de Cima, Serra de Fora, Serra de Dentro, Calheta and a dozen more.

Six: Cal (or Baixo), Cima, Ferro, Fonte da Areia, Cenouras and Fora. All were once joined to the main island and were only separated by erosion in the Holocene, less than 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Two carry lighthouses, on Cima since 1901 and on Ferro since 1959.

The Festas do Concelho, known as São João: eleven days in June — 14 to 24 June in 2026. The musical programme opens on the Palco Cidade, food-and-drink barracas set up on the Alameda Infante D. Henrique for the last six days, and the Marchas Populares parade through the town on the night of 23 June. 24 June is the municipal holiday.

In September: 17 to 20 September 2026. The island goes back to the fifteenth century — caravels in the harbour, a period market, historical music and dance.

A good fifty events a year, from village feasts to golf tournaments, and at least one dated event ten months out of twelve. Everything is in the Events page.

Yes. Cantar os Reis on 5 January and Santo Amaro on 15 January close the Christmas cycle; the Encontro de Caçadores falls in early February and the Festival de Sopas on 20 and 21 February; Carnival follows. December brings the school Christmas plays, the Volta à Cidade race, the Christmas market and the New Year fireworks.

In August, at the Encontro de Folclore on the Praça do Barqueiro, organised by the Junta de Freguesia. It has become international: the 22nd edition, on 22 August 2026, brought five groups together, one of them from Poland.