Madeira Ethnographic Museum

The Madeira Ethnographic Museum in Ribeira Brava presents collections on Madeira’s social, economic, and cultural aspects, including traditional crafts and domestic life.

Planning your visit

The Madeira Ethnographic Museum occupies a former sugar mill and distillery in Ribeira Brava, and sugar is where the island's story begins: Madeira was uninhabited until the fifteenth century, colonised by Portugal, and rapidly turned over to sugar cane worked substantially by enslaved labour — the model later exported to Brazil and the Caribbean.

The collections cover what came after: fishing, agriculture, viticulture and the making of Madeira wine, wicker weaving from Camacha, embroidery, and domestic life. Reconstructed interiors, tools, textiles and a working press convey a rural economy on very steep ground where terracing and the levada irrigation network made cultivation possible at all.

The building itself, with its distillery equipment, is part of the exhibition.

Ribeira Brava is on the south coast west of Funchal, at the mouth of a dramatic valley. Allow ninety minutes. Bookable options include private tours of the museum. Current availability is shown below.