FAROL DA PONTA DO PARGO

Madeira's westernmost light, since 1922.

The lighthouse on the cliff at Madeira's westernmost point, at sundown: a white tower and its red lantern 312 metres over the Atlantic, lit since 1922. Walk out from the car park past the keepers' houses to the viewpoint, and count the flashes.

Ponta do Pargo, since 1922

The last light before the open Atlantic

A light on Madeira's western point was in Portugal's lighthouse plan of 1883; the project was drawn in 1911, and the lamp was first lit on 5 June 1922, on top of a 14-metre tower at the cliff's edge. It burned oil, then petroleum vapour from 1937; generators came in 1958, and in 1989 the mains and automation. The keepers' houses round the tower have held a small museum of Madeira's lighthouses since 2001, and in 2019 it was the most visited lighthouse in Portugal.

From the Portuguese Navy's Direção de Faróis, VisitMadeira and DNOTICIAS.PT.

Three flashes every twenty seconds

Fl (3) W 20s · 312 m · 26 M

Three white flashes, half a second each, then thirteen seconds of dark: that is Ponta do Pargo to a ship, seen 26 nautical miles (48 km) out. The light stands 312 metres above the sea, behind a second-order lens; it was lit with an oil lamp in 1922 and has run on its own since 1989.

THE MUSEUM

Madeira's lighthouses, in the keepers' houses

Since 2001 the keepers' houses round the tower have held a small exhibition of Madeira's lighthouses, the Exposição dos Faróis da Madeira. Its door is at the tower's foot, across the courtyard, under the Navy's blue plate dated 1922. In 2019 the lighthouse had 15,101 visitors, more than any other in Portugal. Hours and entry change: check before you go.

Portuguese Navy (Direção de Faróis) and DNOTICIAS.PT; the exhibition's name from OpenStreetMap.

THE ZERO POINT

Switzerland's map begins out there

The board by the path marks a curiosity. 261.024 kilometres from Ponta do Pargo, west-southwest in the Atlantic (azimuth 253.68°), lies the zero point of LV95, the coordinate system of the Swiss national survey. Nothing can be set up on the open sea, so in April 2018 the board went up here instead.

The board's own text, published by its makers at swissinfopool.com.

THE SUNSET

The island's westernmost cape

The viewpoint stands on Ponta da Vigia, the westernmost cape of Madeira, on the cliff 290 metres above the sea. It looks west over the open Atlantic; in autumn the sun sets a little south of west, straight out to sea. To the north the cliffs run on along the coast as far as Achadas da Cruz.

VisitMadeira.

THE CLIFF

A straight wall of lava, protected since 2018

From Ponta do Tristão down to this point the cliff runs almost dead straight: the swell has cut it back along a continuous platform at its foot. Seen from the fajãs below, its face is lava flows stacked between beds of ash, cut through by dykes. Protected seabirds nest along it. Since 2018 this coast has been the Ponta do Pargo Protected Area: a marine natural park below, a natural monument and a protected landscape on land.

Decreto Legislativo Regional n.º 19/2018/M, which created the protected area.

Visit the lighthouse

Rua do Farol, 9385-251 Ponta do Pargo, Calheta, Madeira

The small museum of Madeira's lighthouses is in the keepers' houses; check the opening hours before you go. The viewpoint is open at any hour.

Direção de Faróis VisitMadeira Directions

Sources and credits

Modelled by Madeira1 from photographs of the lighthouse. The compound, the walls, the car park, the paths and the cliff tops from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL).

The tower, the lantern and the keepers' ranges follow the photographs; every dimension other than the tower's 14 metres, the windows on the faces nobody photographs, the turning beams, the lens's panels, the scrub and the rocks, the fence along the cliff tops, the cars, the seabirds, the clouds and the lights inland are an interpretive reconstruction.

Reference photographs on Wikimedia Commons by Hansueli Krapf, Allie_Caulfield, Koshelyev, Claudio Vosti, Patrice78500, Hein.Mück, Michael Gaylard, Asurnipal, Coeli, Dietmar Rabich and others (CC BY, CC BY-SA, public domain); used for reference only, not shown.

Terrain: Copernicus DEM GLO-30 © DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA. Shaped by hand at the cliff tops.

Facts from the Portuguese Navy's Direção de Faróis, VisitMadeira and DNOTICIAS.PT; the cliff and its protection from Decreto Legislativo Regional n.º 19/2018/M; the survey board's figures from its own text. The Navy did not commission this portrait.

Sound: synthesised in your browser - the wind, the surf far below, the gulls.