Tag Archives: historic zone

Case 2 Funchal’s Old Town 28 years ago work began on restoring part of the 500 years of history of the first residential settlement in Funchal, a city symbolic of Portugal’s Era of Exploration. Throughout the previous decades, the city had expanded westwards, leaving behind to continued degradation part of its history: the Santa Maria neighbourhood. Or as it is otherwise known, the ‘Old Town’. Six years on from the discovery of Madeira (1419), the first settlements were established in the east of the bay thereby founding Funchal. The Santa Maria neighbourhood was chosen as the site for building the …