Funchal's gardens: Monte Palace, the Botanical Garden and Palheiro, and what each costs

Three gardens above Funchal charge admission, and almost nobody does all three. You have an afternoon, or at best two, and most people pick on the strength of a hotel leaflet or of which one the cable car happens to reach.

They cost 18, 10 and 11 euros in 2026. Each takes a different route to get to, only one of them is easy without a car, and the cheapest of the three climbs by published decree to 17.50 euros by 2029. If you were planning to leave that one for the next trip, do the sums first.

Monte Palace sits in the village of Monte, directly above the city, and is the one the cable car delivers you to. It is 70,000 square metres of collected plants, tiles, sculpture and koi ponds, assembled by the Madeiran businessman José Berardo, with a museum attached.

The Botanical Garden is lower down the same valley, on the terraces of the old Quinta do Bom Sucesso, and it is the scientific one: the state runs it, the planting is organised by where things come from and what they are, and the views over Funchal are the best of the three.

Palheiro is further east, above the airport road, at about 500 metres, and is the odd one out. It began as an English landscape garden on a Madeiran estate and still reads like one, with lawns and borders rather than terraces, and the camellia collection goes back to the estate's first owner, the Conde de Carvalhal, whose own plantings are still standing. It is the quietest of the three by a wide margin.

If you only do one and you want to be impressed, Monte Palace. If you want to learn what you have been walking past all week, the Botanical Garden. If you garden yourself, Palheiro, and you will probably stay longer than you planned.

Adults pay 18 euros. Children up to 14 go free with an adult, which makes it the cheapest of the three for a family of four and the most expensive for a couple.

The garden opens at 9h00 every day except 25 December, and closes at 19h00 from April to September and at 18h00 from October to March. Last entry is 18h15 in summer and 17h15 in winter. The museum inside shuts earlier, at 17h30, which catches people who arrive late in the afternoon expecting to see the mineral and sculpture collections.

The palace building itself is not open, so the name promises an interior you cannot have. The two parts I would not skip are the Oriental garden at the bottom and the laurel forest recreation, which is a reasonable stand-in for the week where you never make it up to Ribeiro Frio or Fanal.

The site is steep. The official line is that accessibility is limited because the place is a historic property on sharply sloping ground, and the law allows a historic site to adapt the standards rather than meet them. Read that as a garden of staircases. Accessible toilets exist and staff will help, but a wheelchair or a pushchair will not get round most of it.

The address is Caminho das Babosas 4-A, next to the upper cable car station. Buses 20, 21, 22 and 48 all climb to Monte.

Entry for a non-resident over 12 is 10 euros in 2026, and that figure has a date stamped on it. Under a regional order published in December 2025 and in force since 1 January, the same ticket is 12.50 euros in 2027, 15 euros in 2028 and 17.50 euros in 2029. Ages 6 to 12 pay 3 euros this year, rising to 4, 5 and 6 euros over the same three years. Under 6s go free.

The increases are not inflation catching up with the garden. The order exempts this ticket from the automatic yearly uprating that applies to almost everything else the forestry institute charges, because the rises are already written into the table. So the garden that undercuts Monte Palace by 8 euros today will, in 2029, cost within 50 cents of what Monte Palace charges now. If you come back to Madeira every couple of years, this is the visit to do on the early trip rather than the late one.

Residents of Madeira pay nothing at all, on production of a resident card, and the exemption only started on 1 January 2026. Visitors with a disability of 60% or more, and a carer accompanying them, are also exempt.

The city's visitor pages give the garden as open 9h00 to 18h00, every day. Third-party listings give a later summer closing, and they do not agree with each other, so if your plan depends on being inside after 17h00 in July, ring the garden on +351 291 211 200 before you set out. The address is Caminho do Meio.

A guided botanical visit with one of the institute's own technicians costs 25 euros an hour this year for a group of up to eight, which split six or eight ways is less than the entry ticket. Few visitors seem to ask for it. The printed garden map is 3 euros and worth having, because the labelling assumes you already know what a Macaronesian endemic is.

Adults pay 11 euros, children go free, 15 to 17 year olds pay 6 euros and a group of five pays 10 euros each. Madeira residents pay 6 euros with proof of residence. There is also a 30-entry pass at 150 euros, valid a year, which is aimed at people who treat the place as a park rather than a sight.

It opens daily from 9h00 to 17h00 with last entry at 16h00, and closes only on 25 December and 1 January. The tea house runs 10h00 to 17h00 and is a genuine lunch rather than a kiosk.

Bus 37 stops at the garden entrance. None of the other gardens here has a bus that puts you at the gate, which is the main argument for doing Palheiro by bus and the cable car gardens some other way. Buses 36 and 47 drop you on the regional road a walk away. By car it is about 15 minutes from Funchal and 20 from the airport, and there is no shortage of parking.

What you get for the 11 euros is space. The ground around the viewpoint over Funchal bay was the part worst hit by the 2012 fires, and the garden says so on its own pages rather than steering you past it; the benches up there now sit among Madeiran endemics, the estreleira, the maçaroco and the figueira-do-inferno among them. Elsewhere the bougainvillea flowers most of the year, and the jacarandas, spathodeas and erythrinas take their turn.

The Funchal to Monte cable car charges 22 euros return and 16 euros one way. Children under 7 travel free and 7 to 14 year olds pay half. It runs 8h45 to 17h45 daily except Christmas Day, from Rua Dom Carlos I in the old town up to Largo das Babosas. An e-ticket bought online is valid 60 days, which is useful if the first morning of your trip is wet.

That 22 euros is the biggest single line in a Monte day. Lines 20, 21, 22 and 48 all climb to Monte for an ordinary urban fare, and no, the ride is nothing like the cable car. The compromise most people should make is one leg each way: bus up, cable car down, or the reverse, which keeps the 6 euro gap between a single and a return in your pocket.

There is a second, separate cable car, and it is the one that makes two gardens in a day possible. The Botanical Garden cable car runs from Largo das Babosas across the João Gomes valley to a station at the garden, nine minutes each way, 9h00 to 17h00 with last boarding at 16h50. An adult pays 11 euros one way or 16 euros return, a child aged 7 to 14 pays 6 or 9 euros, and under 7s are free.

Buy it combined with the garden entry and the adult fare is 19 euros one way or 24 euros return, against 21 and 26 euros bought separately. The saving is 2 euros either way, which is small but free, and booking online takes a further 10% off. The combined ticket is valid for 12 months, not for a fixed day.

Buses 29, 30, 31 and 31-A serve the garden's own station if you would rather not pay for the crossing at all, and bus 22 reaches Babosas.

The wicker toboggans leave from Caminho do Monte, a few minutes below the church, and the carreiros charge 30 euros for one person, 40 for two and 60 for three. That is per sledge, not per person, so a couple pays 20 euros each and three people pay 20 euros each.

It runs Monday to Saturday, 9h00 to 18h00. Not on Sundays, which is the detail that undoes the most plans, because Sunday is exactly when a cruise passenger or a weekend visitor goes up to Monte. There are no online bookings at all: you buy on the day, on the spot, and the association closes early when the queue outstrips the daylight or the weather turns. In rain, or on wet ground, they will not take three people on one sledge.

The ride ends at Livramento, not in the city centre. It used to go the whole way down to town and it no longer does, so budget a bus or a taxi for the last stretch, and do not treat the toboggan as your transport home.

Not everything green in Funchal has a gate. The Parque de Santa Catarina above the marina is a public park, free and open, with the best casual view of the harbour in the city. The garden and nursery at Quinta das Cruzes, up the hill from São Pedro church, are free to walk into, and there is a viewpoint just outside it over the western half of the city. At Monte itself there is a small public garden below the old viaduct, which is a pleasant twenty minutes if you have arrived early for the cable car down.

The viaduct is worth a second look, incidentally. A steam cog railway ran from Funchal up to Monte until 1943, when the locomotive's boiler exploded, and the line was never rebuilt. The stonework you are standing on is what is left of it.

The pairing that works is Monte Palace and the Botanical Garden, and the cable cars are what make it work rather than the geography. Go up from town on the first cable car, do Monte Palace from 9h00 while it is empty, walk the five minutes back to Largo das Babosas, cross the valley on the second cable car, and spend the afternoon in the Botanical Garden. The operator puts a garden visit at an hour and a half to two hours, which is about right. Come down from the garden by bus 29, 30, 31 or 31-A.

Full price for one adult doing it that way is 16 euros for the ride up, 18 for Monte Palace and 19 for the crossing with garden entry included: 53 euros, and about six hours. Substituting the bus up saves most of the first 16.

Palheiro does not combine with either of them. It is in the other direction, on a different bus, and it closes at 17h00 when the others are still open. Give it its own half day, preferably a morning, and take bus 37.

Staying in the hills above the city rather than on the seafront suits a trip built around Monte. You are already up at the altitude the gardens are at, the 20 and 21 buses pass you on the way down, and the evening view over the bay is the one people book Madeira for.

If that is the base you want: our partner Madeira with Views has apartments in exactly that band of the city, on the Monte side and above the bay.

Which Funchal garden should I visit if I only pick one? Monte Palace if you want the spectacle and you are arriving by cable car anyway, because it is at the top station. The Botanical Garden if you would rather understand the island's plants and have the better view over the city, and it is 8 euros cheaper this year.

How much is the Funchal cable car? 22 euros return, 16 euros one way, under 7s free and 7 to 14 at half price. It runs 8h45 to 17h45 every day except Christmas Day.

Does the Monte toboggan run on Sundays? No. Monday to Saturday only, 9h00 to 18h00, 30 euros for one rider, 40 for two and 60 for three, bought on the spot on the day.

Is the Botanical Garden going to get more expensive? Yes, and by law rather than by guesswork. The adult ticket is 10 euros in 2026, 12.50 in 2027, 15 in 2028 and 17.50 in 2029. Madeira residents are exempt on production of a resident card.

• Monte Palace Madeira, plan your visit for the 18 euro ticket, the free entry up to 14, the seasonal hours, the museum closing at 17h30, the last entry times, the buses, the address, the closed palace interior and the accessibility statement.
• Portaria n.º 801/2025 of 10 December 2025, in force since 1 January 2026 and republished by Portaria n.º 48/2026, for the Botanical Garden's scheduled prices to 2029, the child rates, the resident and disability exemptions, the 25 euro guided visit, the 3 euro map, and the article excluding this ticket from the automatic annual uprating.
• Câmara Municipal do Funchal, Botanical Garden for the 9h00 to 18h00 daily hours, the address and the telephone number.
• Palheiro Gardens, visit us for the 11 euro adult ticket, the free child entry, the 6 euro youth and resident rates, the group rate, the 30-entry pass, the 9h00 to 17h00 hours with last entry at 16h00, the two closing days, the tea house hours, bus 37 at the entrance and buses 36 and 47 nearby.
• Madeira Cable Car for the 22 euro return and 16 euro one way, the child rules, the 8h45 to 17h45 hours and the 60 day e-ticket.
• Botanical Gardens Cable Car, trips and prices for the 11 and 16 euro fares, the 19 and 24 euro combined tickets, the child rates, the nine minute crossing, the 9h00 to 17h00 hours with last boarding at 16h50, the 12 month validity, the online discount, the bus numbers and the estimate of an hour and a half to two hours in the garden.
• Carreiros do Monte, prices and schedules for the 30, 40 and 60 euro fares, the Monday to Saturday 9h00 to 18h00 operation, the no-booking rule, the weather conditions and the departure and arrival addresses.