Funchal

Funchal is the capital, largest city and a municipality of the Autonomous Region of Madeira, on the Atlantic coast, with 105,795 inhabitants, the sixth largest city in Portugal. Its cultural and historical value makes it one of the country’s main tourist attractions, and it is particularly popular at New Year. In the sixteenth century it was an important stop-over for caravels travelling between the Indies and the New World, and wine has been made here since the earliest settlement, enough of it that commercial wine-makers from England moved to the island in the seventeenth century and changed its economy, its architecture and its way of life with them.