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Visit Porto Santo

Timeline69

Discovered in 1418, settled from the 1420s, ravaged by corsairs and starved by droughts: Porto Santo came through six centuries of isolation before becoming a Biosphere Reserve in 2020. A history in short dates.

60 dates, from the first map to the newest hotel: follow the thread.

14th – 15th centuries12

  1. XIVe

    The island on fourteenth-century portolans

    Angelino Dulcert c. 1339 · Mediceo Laurenziano 1351 · Libro del conoscimiento c. 1385

    Porto Santo and the Madeira archipelago were known to European navigators and cartographers from the middle of the fourteenth century: they appear on several portolans, the nautical charts drawn for navigation — Angelino Dulcert's chart of about 1339, the Portulano Mediceo Laurenziano of 1351, the Libro del conoscimiento of about 1385. The island was not discovered in the strict sense: it was settled.

  2. ·

    The first settlement serves as a rehearsal

    The Portuguese settle here before any other overseas territory

    The Portuguese were the first to settle on Porto Santo, and that settlement — the first of a new land — served as a rehearsal for all those that followed. The decree that raised Vila Baleira to city status in 1996 puts it this way: the island was 'the first Portuguese discovery of the fifteenth century', and therefore 'the first doorway' of the maritime epic.

  3. 1370

    Before the Portuguese

    The island already appears on the Medici Atlas

    The town hall notes that an Italian atlas of about 1370 mentions Porto Santo before the Portuguese navigators arrived.

  4. 1418

    Discovery

    João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira

    Sent to reconnoitre the Moroccan coast for Prince Henry, the two captains were blown off course by a storm and found shelter in a sheltered bay they named Porto Santo, the "holy harbour". Madeira was reached the following year, in 1419.

  5. 1418

    Where the name comes from

    Two theories: Zarco's storm, or a shelter found in the late Middle Ages

    Scholars disagree. The popular version has Zarco and his companions naming the island in 1418 out of gratitude, having found refuge there in a storm. The documented version places the scene in the late Middle Ages: a ship is said to have found safe harbour there after a gale, so that the island was already called Porto Santo before the Portuguese arrived. Both agree on the event — a providential shelter — and differ on the date and on the sailors' nationality.

16th – 18th centuries11

  1. 1533

    Graça chapel

    Founded in 1533, a refuge during raids

    Standing alone on the slope of Pico do Castelo, destroyed in 1812 and rebuilt in the 20th century, it keeps a 16th-century Virgin from a Flemish workshop. Its feast on 15 August is one of the island's best attended.

  2. 1566

    French corsairs

    The church is pillaged and almost destroyed

    In the same year Funchal was sacked for fifteen days by the French under Peyrot de Monluc. On Pico do Castelo a 16th-century fortlet served as a refuge from these raids; on Pico do Facho, fires warned of approaching ships.

  3. 1600

    Algerian corsairs

    1617: between 668 and 900 captives, only 18 men and 7 women escape

    Barbary raids nearly emptied the island. In 1617 an Algerian fleet carried off 668 people from Porto Santo (and 1,200 from Madeira), or 900 by other accounts; the church bells were taken and the archives burnt. Philip II of Portugal ordered the island repopulated and fortified. The matamorras, buried grain silos, became hiding places.

  4. 1617

    What the corsairs did

    Every man caught was killed, a large part of the women carried off

    The island's isolation made it easy prey for 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. It is that raid, more than any other, that nearly ended the settlement.

  5. 1713

    The island almost abandoned

    The Crown keeps the inhabitants in place

    Isolation, aridity and raids called human presence into question; the Crown refused, regarding Porto Santo as a strategic point for Portuguese sovereignty.

19th century10

  1. XIXe

    Ten famines

    1802 · 1806 · 1815 · 1816 · 1823 · 1829 · 1832 · 1847 · 1850 · 1878

    Droughts ruined the cereal crops; the island had only the springs of Areia, Tanque and Fontinha. Relief grain, to be repaid from later harvests, came from Madeira and Lisbon; in 1878 men left to seek work in Machico. The population stayed below half that of Porto Moniz, Madeira's smallest municipality.

  2. XIXe

    Lime and salt

    Ilhéu de Baixo quarries · Serra de Fora salt pans (1890)

    Quarrying limestone, above all on Ilhéu de Baixo, employed a large share of the working population; the Serra de Fora salt pans, built in 1890, never yielded as hoped. The islet's galleries can still be seen from Calheta.

  3. 1835

    The municipality

    Vila Baleira becomes the seat of a concelho

    A single parish for the whole island; municipal holiday on 24 June.

  4. 1850

    Six hours of a princely visit

    Maximilian, Duke of Leuchtenberg, grandson of the King of Bavaria and of Josephine

    Prince Maximilian, Duke of Leuchtenberg, grandson of the King of Bavaria and of Empress Josephine of France, stopped for six hours on Porto Santo on 1 March 1850. He handed out generous alms, mostly grain and money, to the island's poorest — in a century marked by ten periods of famine.

  5. 1856

    Cholera

    56 inhabitants lost in a few days

20th century15

  1. 1920

    Reforestation

    António Schiappa de Azevedo plants Pico do Castelo

    Trees and materials were carried by hand up a bare peak; a further conifer campaign covered the slope in the 1950s. His bust stands near the summit.

  2. 1925

    Modern times arrive

    First car 1925 · street lighting 1931 · electricity 1954 · telephone 1959

    Electricity replaced kerosene lamps in 1954; the first telephone link with Madeira dates from 27 August 1959.

  3. 1925

    The first car was a van

    A van ordered by the lime factory; the first Ford two years later

    The first motor vehicle to reach Porto Santo, in 1925, was a cargo van the town's lime factory had brought over to move its raw material. Two years later the first passenger car landed, a Ford. The first moped came only at the end of the 1950s, brought by a mechanic working on the airport site.

  4. 1929

    Passengers stop being carried ashore

    The 102-metre pier, begun on 19 March 1929

    Work on the pier began on 19 March 1929 in the centre of town: 102 metres long by 4 wide, resting on sturdy pillars set at equal distances. From then on, passengers arriving at Porto Santo could embark and disembark under their own power, instead of being carried on the backs or in the arms of strong men, as had been done for centuries.

  5. 1929

    Radio breaks the isolation

    A radio-telegraph station for naval support and control

    Before the telephone, the island already had a radio- telegraph station for naval support and control, in service from 1929: it was this that took Porto Santo out of the complete isolation it had lived in until then. The first telephone link with Madeira dates only from 27 August 1959.

21st century and today21

  1. 2003

    The new Lobo Marinho

    Today's ferry makes its maiden voyage: 112 m, 1,150 passengers, 145 cars

    Built at Viana do Castelo from 2001 to 2003, it bears the Portuguese name of the monk seal. It replaced the first Lobo Marinho, which had opened the line in June 1996.

  2. 2004

    The golf course

    Severiano Ballesteros course: 18 holes, 6,434 m

    Plus a 9-hole par-3 course; it hosted the Madeira Islands Open in 2009.

  3. 2008

    The islets' sea becomes a reserve

    Porto Santo's network of marine protected areas is created around the six islets

    Commercial fishing and sand extraction banned, diving and line fishing from the shore allowed: the sea around the islets of Cal and Cima is protected, wrecks included.

  4. 2009

    The golf course hosts the Madeira Islands Open

    The tournament is played on the course designed by Severiano Ballesteros

    Opened in October 2004, the 18-hole course (6,434 m) and its 9-hole par-3 host the Open that year.

  5. 2010

    The islets given back to the birds

    Five years of work (2010–2015) clear rabbits and mice from the islets of Cima and Cal

    With agaves and tree tobacco pulled out, the plants recorded rise from 94 to 173 species and the snails from 33 to 60. Shearwaters and petrels nest in peace.

Culture and traditions13

A dance found nowhere else, hats woven from palm leaves, clay roofs, windmills and fountains where the world was put to rights: the island's everyday culture.

  • The Baile da Meia-Volta

    A dance that defines Porto Santo

    Collected along with the baile do ladrão and the baile sério by the Grupo de Folclore do Porto Santo, founded in 1963 by Father Martins Júnior and first performed on 1 November that year; some forty dancers aged 12 to 60 in late-19th-century costumes of linen, tow and wool.

  • Crafts

    Palmito hats, reed basketry, shells, clay

    Young leaves of the Canary palm, dried and plaited, become hats and bags; baskets of cana-vieira; shepherds, mills and nativity figures in sun-dried clay; lamps and frames made from shells picked up on the beach; miniature ox-carts and wine presses. In the past, women embroidered for Madeira and the island made tiles stamped S.V.

  • Casas de salão

    Clay roofs, reed partitions, an oven and a stone chimney

    Low houses roofed with "salão", a sandy clay that lets air through its cracks in summer and swells watertight in winter; reed partitions stuffed with straw or fern, an earthen floor, a living room, a bedroom and a kitchen. One Casa de Salão can be visited near Farrobo.

  • Portela windmills

    Three restored windmills, inaugurated on 14 October 2023

    The island's first windmill is said to date from 1794. Long awaited, the three Portela windmills were returned to their original site; the folklore group sang at the opening.

  • Wine from the sands

    Listrão and Caracol behind the crochet walls

    Since the charter of 1770, vines have grown in the sand; the stacked dry-stone walls known as crochet give them warmth and shelter. Pedro Dias is the island's first certified organic grower; the Festa das Vindimas celebrates the grapes in late August.

  • The fountains, the island's meeting rooms

    People waited two or three hours for water — time enough to talk and embroider

    The fountains of Porto Santo are, in the municipality's words, the living testimony of the island's culture: they were the meeting points where stories, songs and news were shared. Filling two tins of water often took two to three hours; the women used the time to talk and to embroider, while men paid for the job carried the water home, in tins on their backs, in jugs at their necks or in barrels.

Curiosities16

  • c. 1370 — Before the Portuguese — The island already appears on the Medici Atlas

    The town hall notes that an Italian atlas of about 1370 mentions Porto Santo before the Portuguese navigators arrived.

  • 1418 — Discovery — João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira

    Sent to reconnoitre the Moroccan coast for Prince Henry, the two captains were blown off course by a storm and found shelter in a sheltered bay they named Porto Santo, the "holy harbour". Madeira was reached the following year, in 1419.

  • The rabbit legend — A pregnant doe that escaped at the first landing

    An old tradition blames Perestrelo for the island's sparse vegetation: a doe that had littered during the crossing was released and its offspring overran Porto Santo within a few years. Encyclopaedias note that no contemporary source is cited for the story.

  • 1478–1480 — Christopher Columbus — Marries Filipa Moniz, Perestrelo's daughter

    A sugar trader, Columbus visited the archipelago from 1478 and married Filipa Moniz Perestrelo around 1479. The couple lived for a time on Porto Santo, where tradition places the birth of their son Diogo (c. 1479–1480) and the planning of the westward crossing. Columbus called at the island again in 1498, on his third voyage.

Places of memory14

Chapels, museums, a fort, a lime kiln: the places where history is within reach.

  • 🏛️ Culture

    Casa Museu Cristóvão Colombo

    The house where, according to oral tradition, Christopher Columbus lived after marrying Filipa Moniz: two early-16th-century Gothic-arched windows open in its north wall, and the present ensemble on Travessa da Sacristia was unified by works in the 18th and 19th centuries. The museum opened in 1989 and was redesigned in 2004 around Portuguese and Spanish expansion, with a space devoted to the Dutch colonial empire and part of the treasure of the Slot ter Hooge, the VOC ship wrecked off the north of the island in 1724; also a late-15th-century Iberian processional cross and an early-17th-century Japanese missal stand. Columbus called again at Porto Santo in 1498. Hours: weekdays 10am–12.30pm and 2–5.30pm, Sunday 10am–1pm, closed Mondays and holidays; fee on site.

    Fee on site 1h
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  • 🏛️ Culture

    Igreja Nossa Senhora da Piedade

    Porto Santo's mother church, on Largo do Pelourinho, on the site of the island's first chapel. Built between 1430 and 1446 and raised to a parish in 1500, pillaged and almost destroyed by French corsairs in 1566 and burnt several times, it was completely rebuilt in 1667. The Gothic Morgada chapel on the south side is the last trace of the 15th-century building. A modest façade, a single nave and a chancel beneath a polychrome rocaille wooden ceiling; altars and paintings by Martim Conrado and Max Römer. Nossa Senhora da Piedade is the island's patron, celebrated on the last weekend of August.

    Free 30 min
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  • 🏛️ Culture

    Largo do Pelourinho

    The heart of Vila Baleira is a triangular square planted with palms, bougainvillea and dragon trees — the Macaronesian tree whose red resin, "dragon's blood", was used in dyes, varnishes and remedies. It links the old town hall, part of which dates from the 16th century, to the mother church, built on the island's first chapel (1420–1446). A step away on Rua Cristóvão Colombo stands the small 16th-century Mannerist Misericórdia chapel and, on the other side, the new town hall and the Centro Cultural e de Congressos, where the town's main events take place. Terrace cafés; stages for the Columbus Festival in September.

    Free 30 min
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