Top 10 Madeira (Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guides)

Madeira’s Top 10
54
Left Madeira Carnival Right New Year
Festivals
! Christmas Cribs
The festive year begins in
December when churches and
shops mount cribs with a cast of
traditional characters, including
rustic shepherds. If you visit outside
Christmas, you can see
antique crib figures at the Quinta
das Cruzes and the Casa Museu
Frederico de Freitas (see p38).
Flower Festival
New Year Lights @ Colourful street lights are
suspended across the main
streets of Funchal from early
December, but New Year is even
more spectacular, as locals open
their curtains and switch on their
house and car lights, flooding
Funchal’s amphitheatre with light.
Fireworks explode, ships blow
their hooters, and cars their horns.
£ Carnival
Carnival is celebrated over
three days before Shrove Tuesday.
Schools, youth clubs and marching
bands parade the streets in fancy
dress, followed by the colourful
allegorical parade that fills the
city on the last day. Though not as
wild as Rio, this carnival is still
an excuse to let your hair down.
$ Flower Festival
Scarcely is Carnival over
before the floats come out again
for the spring Flower Festival in
April. Originally created as a tourist
attraction, this is a festival
that Madeirans have now taken
to their heart, with passionate
competition among local clubs to
produce the best float.
% St James (São Tiago)
Funchal has its very own
“village” festival on 1 May, when
city dignitaries process up Rua
de Santa Maria to the 18th-century
Baroque Socorro church, and
place their chains of office at the
feet of St James (Funchal’s
patron saint), renewing the city’s
pledge to honour him for rescuing
them in 1523 from the plague.
Atlantic Festival ^ Held in late May and early
June, the Festival do Atlântico
combines fireworks, street entertainment
and music festival.
There are performances by international
stars as well as the
accomplished local musicians of
the Orquestra Clássica da Madeira,
the Orquestra de Mandolins
and the Funchal Brass Ensemble.
Assumption in Monte
& The Virgin is greatly revered
by pious Madeirans because
they believe she takes pity on
human suffering. 15 August, the
day on which she is believed to
have been assumed into heaven,
is observed in Monte (see p26)