Cristiano Ronaldo in Madeira: the museum, the statue, the hotel and where he grew up

Ronaldo's Funchal fits into half a day, and most of it sits on one square by the port. The museum, the bronze statue and the hotel with the rooftop bar all stand on the Praça do Mar on the seafront, so the decision is whether to add the two stops that need a car: the airport bust and the hillside parish where he grew up. A fan can fill a morning here. Everyone else can drop in for forty minutes between the marina and lunch.

The Museu CR7 is small and takes about forty minutes. The statue outside is free and takes five. The rooftop bar of the Pestana CR7 hotel next door serves non-guests, and it is the best of the three if what you want is a drink with a view of the harbour. The airport bust is a two-minute detour on your way in or out, not a trip in itself. Santo António, the parish where he grew up, has a tribute mural and his first club's ground, but nothing built for visitors. Go if the story matters to you and skip it if you only know the name.

The museum is at Avenida Sá Carneiro, Praça do Mar 27, on the square between the marina and the port. It opened in December 2013 in a smaller space on Rua Imperatriz Dona Amélia and moved into the hotel building on the seafront in June 2016. The museum's own site gives the hours as Monday to Saturday, 10:00 to 17:00, so it is closed on Sundays, and it says any occasional closure is announced on its social media in advance. The museum charges admission, but it publishes no price: its own site gives none, and the city tourism listing says only that entry is paid. Check the current price on the museum's site, museucr7.com, before you go.

By its own account it holds every trophy he has won, from youth football onwards. The named pieces are the four Golden Boots, the five Ballons d'Or and the five Champions League trophies, plus a wax figure, a wall of fan mail and an augmented reality photo corner. It is cabinets and screens. Read the plaques and you will be done in forty minutes. On days with ships in port, be there at 10:00.

Verdict: worth the ticket for a fan, and a fair way to spend a wet hour for anyone else. Do not expect a stadium museum on the scale of Madrid or Manchester.

The bronze outside the entrance is by Ricardo Velosa, a sculptor who teaches at the University of Madeira, and it was unveiled on 21 December 2014 with Ronaldo present. At 3.4 metres and 800 kg it shows him in his free-kick stance, feet apart, arms open, eyes on the goal. The press argued about the proportions at the time, and the polished patch on the bronze shows where a decade of visitors have put their hands for the photo. The square carries two names: the museum's address is Praça do Mar, while the square itself was renamed Praça CR7, which is what the hotel next door uses. Either way it is public, so the statue is free and there at any hour, with the marina behind it for the picture.

The building around the museum is the Pestana CR7 Funchal, a four-star hotel developed by the Pestana Hotel Group in partnership with Ronaldo and opened in July 2016. You do not need a room to use the rooftop. The Off-Side bar and lounge is open from 10:00 to 18:00, and the hotel's own wording is that it "invites both guests and locals to meet up for a drink". It looks over the marina and the cruise berths, which makes it a good place to wait for a ship or a taxi. The pool up there is for guests. The hotel also has a sports bar, Inverse by CR7, and a pizza place, Morsi.

Madeira's airport at Santa Cruz was renamed Aeroporto Internacional da Madeira Cristiano Ronaldo on 29 March 2017, and the bronze bust unveiled at the ceremony, by the local sculptor Emanuel Santos, became famous for looking like someone else. It was replaced on 15 June 2018 with a bust by a Spanish sculptor, which is the one on show today. It stands in the arrivals area, so you will pass it on the way to the taxis without trying. The airport is about 19 km by road from the museum, so it is not an outing in itself. See it on arrival or departure. For getting between the airport and Funchal, see our airport page.

Ronaldo was born in the São Pedro parish of Funchal in February 1985 and grew up in Santo António, the hillside parish north-west of the centre, in the neighbourhood of Quinta do Falcão. His father was a municipal gardener and the part-time kit man at CF Andorinha, the local club, where Ronaldo played from 1992 to 1995 before two years at Nacional and the move to Sporting in Lisbon in 1997, aged 12.

What a visitor can see: the Andorinha ground, the Estádio do Andorinha, in Santo António, and the tribute mural at the Quinta Falcão community centre, unveiled on 29 May 2026 with his mother present. In 2021 Nike restored the neighbourhood pitch where, in his words, he first set his goal to become the best.

Beyond those two, this is a residential area rather than a sight. The house the family rented was council property, and Funchal city council demolished it in 2007 as unfit to live in, so there is nothing to find and no reason to knock on doors. Santo António's parish church is about 4 km by road from the seafront, under ten minutes by taxi from Praça do Mar.

Ronaldo's second club, CD Nacional, plays at the Estádio da Madeira in Choupana, in the hills in the north of Funchal, 7 km and ten to fifteen minutes by car from the museum. The 5,200-seat stadium opened in 1999, after his time there, and the club's training complex around it includes a youth campus named the Cristiano Ronaldo Campus Futebol. It is a working training centre, not an attraction. If you want to see it, go to a home match.

• 10:00 Museum, from opening, before the ship parties arrive.
• 10:45 Statue and square.
• 11:00 Coffee or a beer on the Off-Side rooftop.
• 11:45 Walk east along the seafront: the marina is 600 m, the cathedral 850 m, the cable car base station 1.2 km and the Fortaleza de São Tiago 1.6 km.
• Afternoon, by taxi, for the dedicated: Santo António for the mural and the Andorinha ground, then Choupana. Leave the airport bust for the day you fly.

On a cruise day the museum is the closest sight to the ship: the passenger terminal is 1.2 km along the port road, a quarter of an hour on foot, and no bus is needed. Our cruise page covers what else fits in a port day.

If you are staying in Funchal, anything in the centre is within a twenty-minute walk of the square; our guide to where to stay in Madeira compares the areas. For a base in the hills above the city with the whole bay in view, the houses at Madeira with Views (https://www.madeira-with-views.com/) are the ones we point people to.

More Ronaldo coverage, including the news, is on our Cristiano Ronaldo topic page.

How much is the CR7 museum and when is it open? Entry is paid, but neither the museum nor the city tourism listing publishes a figure, so check museucr7.com for the current price. Open Monday to Saturday, 10:00 to 17:00, closed on Sundays. Allow forty minutes.

Can you go to the Pestana CR7 rooftop without staying? Yes. The Off-Side rooftop bar is open 10:00 to 18:00 to guests and non-guests. The pool is for guests only.

Where is the Ronaldo statue? In front of the museum on Praça CR7, on the Funchal seafront. It is free and accessible at any hour.

Can you visit the house where Ronaldo grew up? No. The house the family rented in Quinta do Falcão, Santo António, was demolished by the city council in 2007. The mural at the community centre and the Andorinha ground are the public stops.