Pico de Ana Ferreira

The highest point on the western side of the island (283 m), famous for its "piano": a set of almost perfect light-grey prismatic columns that in fact look more like organ pipes. They are lava, a volcanic rock split into prisms by the contraction stresses of magma cooling slowly inside a volcanic conduit; the former quarry that exposed them is geosite, listed as a property of regional value and geological heritage in the municipal master plan. The best vantage point is the Miradouro da Pedreira, close to the golf course and 144 m from the paved road; a footpath starts from the slopes where the São Pedro chapel stands, a 17th-century building altered in the 18th century whose pebble-paved churchyard depicts a caravel. Legend has it that the Ana Ferreira cave sheltered an illegitimate daughter of King João II.