Best Places to Stay in Madeira (Area Guide)
Where you sleep in Madeira decides more of your trip than it does on most islands, because the place is 57 kilometres wide and takes all day to cross. Funchal is the answer for most first visits and the west coast is the answer for most second ones, and the middle ground, the north coast and the far villages, is a day trip rather than a base for almost everybody. This guide compares every part of the island as somewhere to actually stay, says who each one is wrong for, and hands off to the street level guides once you have picked.
Where to stay in Madeira, by the kind of trip you are having
- First trip. Funchal. Everything walkable, the whole island within reach, and no need to drive until you want to.
- No car. Funchal, and specifically the Old Town or the Lido. Nowhere else on the island works without one.
- Second or third trip. Paúl do Mar or the west coast, where the island stops performing and starts being lived in.
- A family of four. Central Funchal, in a two bedroom flat with parking, five minutes from dinner.
- A group of up to ten. Casa Carneirinho in Paúl do Mar, a 1930s seafront villa with five bedrooms and a garden.
- Surfers and walkers. Paúl do Mar. The reef break is out front and the PR19 finishes on the seafront.
- A month or more. São Martinho, just west of the centre, where the long stay flat and the parking are.
- Ten days or more. Split it. Funchal first, west coast second, and move once.
If you already know it is Funchal, the street by street version is where to stay in Funchal. If you already know it is the west, it is where to stay in Paúl do Mar.
Start With the Car, Not the View
Almost every base in Madeira is pleasant. What separates them is whether your days work without driving, and that single question sorts the whole island into two answers. Funchal functions completely on foot: you can spend a week there, eat somewhere different every night, ride the cable car, swim, and take a bus or a taxi to a trailhead, and never sit behind a wheel. Everywhere else on this page assumes a car the way a house assumes a front door.
The second question is how long you have. Under five nights, one base, and it should be Funchal, because the time you would spend relocating is a meaningful fraction of the trip. Over eight nights, a split stay starts paying for itself. Between the two it is a matter of taste, and the honest answer is that moving once is rarely regretted and moving twice usually is.
What almost nobody needs is to base themselves in the middle of the island or on the north coast. Santana, São Vicente and Porto Moniz are spectacular and they are day trips: the restaurant choice is thin, the weather is wetter, and you would be driving south over the mountain for most of what you came to do.
Distances here are measured in minutes, never kilometres. Funchal to Paúl do Mar is 55 kilometres and an hour. Funchal to Porto Moniz is 60 kilometres and an hour and a half, because the second half is over the top. Read every distance on this page as a drive time and the island makes sense.
Funchal, and Why Most First Trips Belong in It
Funchal is a city of about 110,000 people built up the sides of a south facing bowl, which is why the streets go uphill and why the weather is better here than anywhere else on the island. The mountains behind it catch the cloud coming off the north, and the city sits under the gap it leaves. In practice that means Funchal is dry and bright on a lot of days when the interior is not, which is worth knowing in December.
What it gives you as a base is optionality. The airport is twenty minutes east. Every bus on the island starts or finishes here. The restaurants are the best on Madeira by a wide margin, the market is real, and the cable car, the Old Town and the promenade are all within a walk of each other. If you are not sure what kind of trip you want yet, this is the base that lets you decide on the second morning rather than the day you book.
The cost is that it is the busiest part of the island, and in July, August and the fortnight around New Year it feels it. Cruise ships put several thousand people into the Old Town between ten and four on a lot of days. None of that is a reason not to stay, but it is the reason we tell people to eat at eight rather than seven and to see the market in the afternoon.
Old Town and Rua da Carreira
The historic centre, roughly between the cathedral, Rua da Carreira and the painted door streets of the Zona Velha, is Funchal at its most atmospheric and the area we send couples to. Stone pavements, bakeries, fishmongers, the covered market and about forty restaurants inside a fifteen minute walk. The one real caveat is parking, which is genuinely scarce, so if you are hiring a car take somewhere with a dedicated space rather than assuming you will find one.
Avenida do Infante and Santa Catarina
A few minutes west of the historic core, between the centre and the Lido, with Santa Catarina Park on one side and the marina and casino below. It is the quieter, greener half of central Funchal and it is walkable to both the Old Town and the seafront, which is why it suits families and anybody who wants a balcony with a sea view and a desk to work at without giving up being able to walk to dinner.
Lido and Praia Formosa
Two kilometres west along the promenade is the Lido, which is Funchal's sun and sea neighbourhood: seawater pools cut into the rock, restaurants and supermarkets along the front, and Praia Formosa, the island's largest beach, ten minutes further on. It is pebble rather than sand, like almost everything here. Choose it over the Old Town if pool access and swimming matter more to you than being in the middle of the city, and walk the promenade back into town at least once, because it is one of the best free hours on the island.
São Martinho, for a long stay
West again, above Praia Formosa, São Martinho is residential Funchal: a hill of flats and houses with ocean views, a supermarket you can park at, and none of the Old Town's evening noise. It is the right answer for a month rather than a week, and our home there takes a minimum of thirty nights, which tells you exactly who it is for. Remote workers and people spending a winter here, mostly.
These are the three services our Funchal guests use most, and the first two are what make a Funchal base work without owning the week to a hire car.
Paúl do Mar, and Why Second Trips End Up There
Paúl do Mar is on the south west coast, an hour from Funchal, and it is a few hundred people on a shelf of land between 300 metre cliffs and the Atlantic. There is one seafront road, a black pebble beach, a small supermarket, a pharmacy, a handful of cafés and one of the island's best reef breaks. There is no resort strip, no promenade of restaurants and nothing built for visitors, and that is the entire proposition.
What it gives you is the version of Madeira that most people only drive through. Sunsets straight down the Atlantic, because this is the coast that faces west. The PR19 Caminho Real, which drops 700 metres from Prazeres and finishes on the seafront. Surf from autumn through spring for people who already know how. And a car that, from here, reaches Calheta, Jardim do Mar, Ponta do Pargo, the Paúl da Serra plateau and Porto Moniz far more easily than it does from Funchal.
The cost is real and worth stating plainly. You are an hour from the capital, so anything east is a long day, and there is no practical way to stay here without driving. Three nights is the minimum that makes sense and five is better. As a second base on a longer trip it is close to unbeatable; as the only base on a four night first trip it is the wrong call.
If you are choosing the west coast for the sunsets, take somewhere on the seafront rather than up the hill. The difference between watching the sun go into the Atlantic from your own terrace and walking down to the sea wall for it sounds small in a listing and is not small in practice.
Funchal or the West Coast, Line by Line
Most people arrive at this page choosing between those two, so here they are against each other on the things that actually change a week.
| Funchal | Paúl do Mar | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | First trips, city days, day tripping | Slow travel, surf, walking, couples |
| Car needed | No in the city, useful for the island | Yes, without exception |
| Airport | About 20 minutes | About 60 minutes |
| Eating out | Dozens of options on foot | A handful, plus Bar de Pedra |
| Swimming | Lido sea pools, Praia Formosa | Black pebble seafront, surf breaks |
| Walking access | Excellent by car, workable by taxi | PR19 from the door, car for the rest |
| Crowds | Moderate, busy in July and August | Quiet the whole year |
| Shortest stay worth it | Two nights | Three nights |
What the table cannot say is which of the two you will want to come back to. In our experience it is roughly one for one, and the people who love Paúl do Mar tend to love it a great deal more than the Funchal regulars love Funchal.
The Other Areas, and What Each One Is Really For
Five more places come up constantly when people are searching, and all five are worth your time. Whether they are worth your bed is a different question, and mostly the answer is no.
Câmara de Lobos
A working fishing harbour nine kilometres west of Funchal, where Churchill set up an easel repeatedly in the 1950s and where poncha was more or less invented. Twenty minutes from the city and a lovely half day. As a base it gives you a slightly quieter Funchal with a much thinner restaurant choice, which is a trade most people would not make.
Calheta
Forty five minutes west, and the holder of one of the island's only two golden sand beaches, imported and held between breakwaters. It has a marina, a contemporary art museum and the easiest swimming on the south coast, and it is the one alternative base we genuinely recommend for families with small children who want actual sand. It is also twenty minutes from Paúl do Mar, so it makes a softer version of the west coast stay.
Porto Moniz and the north west
The volcanic pools are one of the best swims in Madeira and the drive there over the Paúl da Serra plateau is one of the best roads. It is an hour and a half from Funchal and the far corner of everything, so stay a night if you are doing a full island loop and otherwise take it as a day.
Santana and the north coast
The A-frame thatched palheiros are here, and so is the trailhead for the Caldeirão Verde levada. It is green, dramatic and noticeably wetter than the south, which is the whole reason it looks like that. An excellent overnight in the middle of a loop and a poor week.
Machico and Caniço, out east
Close to the airport, warmer and drier again than Funchal, and with the island's other sand beach at Machico. Both are full of large hotels and both work fine, and what you give up against central Funchal is the walking city: you will be driving or bussing in for dinner most evenings.
The Split Stay, and When It Earns Itself
Over about eight nights, one base starts costing you the same drive twice. The split we recommend is straightforward: the first half in Funchal while you are still doing the city, the market, the cable car and the levadas that start inland, then move west for the second half and spend it on the coast that faces the sunset. Move once, in the middle, on a day with nothing else in it.
Do it in that order rather than the reverse. Arriving into Funchal means the airport transfer is twenty minutes rather than an hour on the day you are most tired, and finishing on the west coast means the trip ends slowly, which is the right shape for a holiday. Flying home from Paúl do Mar needs an hour and a quarter and an early alarm, so if your flight is before ten in the morning, reverse it after all.
Both of our itineraries are built this way, with the west coast leg optional in the shorter one: see the seven day itinerary for the full version and the five day for the compressed one.
A split stay means two sets of dates, and the west coast cottages are small and few. Casa Carneirinho in particular, the only home on this page that sleeps ten, books out months ahead for school holidays and at New Year.
Where to Stay in Madeira, Answered
What is the best area to stay in Madeira for first-timers?
Funchal, almost every time. The historic centre and the Lido are both fully walkable, both are well connected to the rest of the island by bus and taxi, and both put you within a few minutes of somewhere good to eat. You can do a first trip without ever driving, and you can decide what kind of trip it is after you arrive rather than before you book.
Where should you stay in Madeira without a car?
Funchal, and within Funchal either the Old Town and Rua da Carreira area or the Lido. Both are entirely walkable, both are on the bus network, and both have taxis within a couple of minutes at any hour. Nowhere else on the island is a realistic car free base, including Paúl do Mar, where the bus is not built around visitors.
Is it better to stay in Funchal or outside Funchal?
Funchal for convenience and for a first trip, outside it for atmosphere and quiet. The compromise most of our returning guests settle on is a split: four or five nights in the city, then two or three on the west coast. Under about eight nights in total, stay put in Funchal and drive out from it.
Do you need to rent a car in Madeira?
It depends on the base. For a Funchal trip of three to five days, no, and the roads are steep enough that a nervous driver may be happier without one. For anything based outside Funchal, or for a week or more where you want the west coast, the north coast and the interior properly, yes. A middle option a lot of people take is to hire a car for two or three days of a week rather than all of it.
Which area of Funchal is best to stay in?
The Old Town and Rua da Carreira for culture, atmosphere and eating out on foot, and the Lido if pool access, swimming and the seafront promenade matter more to you. Avenida do Infante sits between the two and is the quiet compromise. If you are staying a month rather than a week, look at São Martinho instead.
Is Madeira better in the north or the south?
Stay in the south and visit the north. The south coast is drier, warmer and sunnier because the mountains take the weather out of the air before it gets there, and it is where the towns, the restaurants and the airport are. The north is greener, wilder and more dramatic, and it is at its best as a day out from a southern base.
Every Home We Have, in Both Areas
Six of our nine homes are in Funchal and three are in Paúl do Mar, which is the same choice this guide has been describing. In Funchal, Carreira Solar and Carreira Vicente are the Old Town and Rua da Carreira pair, Santa Catarina is the Avenida do Infante flat with the sea view balcony and the desk, Lido Branca and Lido Casa are the two on Rua da Casa Branca with pool access, and Centro Mar is the São Martinho home for stays of a month or more. In Paúl do Mar, Casa Carneirinho sleeps ten and the two Palheiro cottages sleep two each. Use the filter to see one area at a time. All nine are booked direct with the hosts and none of them carry a booking fee.
Once you have picked an area
Areas
Where to Stay in Funchal
The neighbourhood guide: Old Town, Avenida do Infante and the Lido, street by street.
Read guide
Areas
Why Stay in Paúl do Mar
The village, the surf, the sunsets and the walk down, and who should book elsewhere.
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Areas
Where to Stay in Paúl do Mar
The three cottages side by side: sizes, layouts and who each one actually suits.
Read guide
Plan
Madeira Without a Car
Where to base yourself and how to reach the island if you would rather not drive.
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