The town of São Vicente

[Photos] [Presentation] [Situation] [Visits] [Culture] [Practical Information] [Other topics]

[Madeira] [Parent topics] [Next topics] [Via Gallica]

Presentation

General information
São Vicente is perhaps the prettiest village of the Madeira and, contrary to much others, it compact, very well is maintained and is likely distinguished to be pedestrian. The houses grouped around the church were the subject of a restoration and it is pleasant to stop there. Beyond São Vicente, a high cliff draws up its impressive mass. Many cascades leap with the improvist at the entrance of tunnels hidden by the turns. The cultures are rare: just a little vine on the terraces which protect from the hedges of dried brooms.

The town of São Vicente blottit with the hollow of a cliff, a little away from the sea and safe from violent one winds of the ocean, to 500 m of the mouth of will ribeira Grande, at the place even where the valley has been just tightened before opening out to throw itself in the ocean.

Visits

Igreja de São Vicente
The church Saint Vincent dates from the 16th century. Inside, very beautiful mural decorations in azulejos and gilded furnace bridges attest width of the baroquisation of the Gothic church. January 22nd, one celebrates with a lot of music, of dances and processions the patron saint, São Vicente,
Capelinha do Calhau
Close to the shore, at the place where the river is thrown in the sea, this vault was dug in a rock vis-a-vis the unchained sea. At at the beginning of August, one goes there in pilgrimage and the procession gives place to a popular holiday during which one blesses the houses to preserve natural disasters.
Capela de Nossa Senhora de Fátima
In height, on a hill dominating São Vicente, draws up a strange church - makes of it a tower of the clock without clock - surmounting a small vault dedicated to Our Lady de Fatima. This isolated place is an important place of pilgrimage and one can see it with kilometers with the round.
Grutas de São Vicente
The caves of São Vicente offer a captivating voyage to the center of the Earth, along a course of 700 m in the galleries of lava, basalt and iron, formed by the explosion of the volcano of Paúl da Serra which occurred 400,000 years ago. The center of the Vulcanian theory (Central do Vulcanismo) explains the geological formation of Madeira. These caves of lava are located at 800 m in the south-east of the town of São Vicente.

History, literature, arts, traditions, legends, religions, myths, symbols…

History