Museu da Baleia
Machico
Whaling history, life-size whales and stereoscopic 3D films in a purpose-built museum at Caniçal - the island's best museum for children by a distance.
- Indoors
- From 4
- Children free
Museums and animals
Whales, monkeys, sharks in a tank, sugar under a glass floor and science you are allowed to touch - the wet-weather half of the island.
Espaço Multiusos do Porto Moniz
Porto Moniz
The municipality's exhibition hall on the Porto Moniz seafront, whose permanent show explains the UNESCO laurel forest the family has just driven through.
- Indoors
- Ages 5-14
- Children free
Museu A Cidade do Açúcar
Funchal
A free, small archaeology museum on Praça Colombo, built over the excavated foundations of a 15th-century sugar merchant's house.
- Indoors
- Ages 7-12
- Children free
Museu de História Natural do Jardim Botânico
Funchal
One room of fossils, minerals, insects and preserved Madeiran vertebrates inside the Botanical Garden, covered by the garden ticket.
- Indoors
- Ages 5-12
- Children free
Núcleo Museológico Rota do Cal
São Vicente
A free lime-kiln museum in the hills above São Vicente: a thirty-minute walk from the limestone quarries to the kiln, fossils over five million years old, and a film on how lime was burned.
- Outdoors
- Ages 6-14
- Children free
Museu Quinta das Cruzes
Funchal
A manor-house museum uphill from the cathedral whose romantic garden - stonework, old trees, a small chapel - is free to walk and open to anyone.
- Partly covered
- From 2
- Children free
Jardim Botânico da Madeira - Eng.º Rui Vieira
Funchal
The regional botanical garden on the Bom Sucesso hillside, with a cactus terrace, the patterned carpet beds, an aviary of parrots and macaws, and its own cable car down from Monte.
- Outdoors
- Ages 3-12
- Children free
Monte Palace Tropical Garden
Funchal
A steeply terraced hillside garden at the top of the Monte cable car, with koi ponds, an oriental garden, azulejo panels and a small terracotta army.
- Outdoors
- Ages 6-12
- Children free
Palheiro Gardens (Quinta do Palheiro Ferreiro)
Funchal
Fourteen hectares of Blandy family estate at 500 metres above Funchal, camellia avenues and a sunken garden and 650-odd labelled species, free for anyone under 15.
- Outdoors
- From 5
- Children free
Prices and opening times change without notice, and on this island they change often. Everything here carries the date it was checked in our research notes; if a place has moved or closed, tell us and we will fix it.