Natural pools of Porto Moniz

At the north-western tip of Madeira, the Atlantic breaks against a shelf of black volcanic rock and spills into a chain of natural basins, where swimmers float in calm, clear seawater while waves crash a few metres away. These are the lava pools of Porto Moniz: hollows left when lava flows cooled at the edge of the sea, sheltered by ridges of dark basalt and refilled by the ocean with every high tide.

The pools sit at the foot of the town of Porto Moniz, the seat of the island's north-westernmost municipality, where the steep green slopes of Madeira drop straight into the ocean. Just offshore rises Ilhéu Mole, a small lava dome with a slightly warmer, reddish tone than the surrounding rock, crowned by a tiny white lighthouse standing some 60 metres above the water.

The settlement grew up in the late fifteenth century, in the first generations after the Portuguese colonisation of Madeira. It takes its name from Francisco Moniz, a nobleman from the Algarve who was among the first to establish farms and a chapel here, and who was connected by marriage to João Gonçalves Zarco, the first captain of Funchal. Porto Moniz became a separate municipality in 1835, was abolished and restored more than once during the nineteenth century, and today has fewer than three thousand inhabitants. Its small size makes the pools all the more striking: the volcanic shoreline, rather than any building, is the town's chief landmark, a reminder that the whole of Madeira is volcanic in origin.

Getting there

The pools lie on the waterfront of the town of Porto Moniz, on Madeira's north-west coast. Câmara de Lobos, on the south coast just west of Funchal, is about 30 km away in a straight line across the island's mountainous interior. The nearest airport is Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport (FNC), on the south-east coast, about 42 km away in a straight line.