Museums and animals

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

Six screens inside the Fórum Madeira mall on Estrada Monumental, and the one place on the island where a children's film reliably runs dubbed into Portuguese.

• Indoors
• From 3
• No price published

Twelve tanks of Madeiran and Macaronesian sea life - groupers, moray eels, more than ninety native species - inside a rebuilt 18th-century fort by the Porto Moniz lava pools.

• Indoors
• Ages 2-10
• Children from 4 €

Over forty painted optical-illusion scenarios, including an upside-down room, built to be photographed with a child standing inside them.

• Indoors
• From 4
• Children from 8.1 €

The city's own natural history collection in the Palácio de São Pedro on Rua da Mouraria: Madeiran birds, fish, fossils, monk seal material and a small basement aquarium.

• Indoors
• Ages 3-10
• Children free

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

A working teaching farm at Prazeres with ponies, donkeys, goats, rabbits and birds, an orchard and herb garden, and a tea house that serves its own produce.

• Outdoors
• Ages 1-8
• No price published

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

Funchal's municipal theatre slots three or four properly staged children's titles into each six-month season, baby theatre included, at five to ten euros a seat.

• Indoors
• From 3
• Children from 5 €

The yellow 17th-century fort above Barreirinha - ramparts, cannon and an archaeology museum - closed, with access to the on-site restaurant only.

• Indoors
• From 4
• No price published

Eight lava tubes from an eruption about 890,000 years ago, more than a kilometre of them and up to six metres high, with a volcanism pavilion next door - closed indefinitely.

• Indoors
• From 4
• No price published