Tag Archives: recuperation

Case 1 From pizzas to slow-travel We wander the streets in which the traditional white of the facades throws back the light and the heat of a January day managing to conjure early spring. We pass a resident and various visiting international tourists, who without exception all greet us with a smile and a “Bom dia” almost as warm as the magnificent weather. We feel something genuine and find it difficult to believe how this village, less than a decade ago, lay in ruins and was down to seven inhabitants. Located in the council of Vila do Bispo, in the …

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 …