Autonomous Madeira Islands in Portugal.

Madeira Islands, archipelago of volcanic origin in the North Atlantic Ocean, belonging to Portugal. It comprises two inhabited islands, Madeira and Porto Santo, and two uninhabited groups, the Desertas and the Selvagens.

The islands are the summits of mountains that have their bases on an abyssal ocean floor. Administratively, they form the autonomous region of Madeira. The regional capital, Funchal, is located on Madeira Island.

Funchal was founded in 1421 by the Portuguese navigator João Gonçalves Zarco, and it was briefly under Spanish in 1580–1640 and British in 1801 and 1807–14 control.

It is now the headquarters of Madeiran industry, commerce, and communications and is the site of a relay station in the Atlantic submarine cable system. The older part of the city focuses on the Sé cathedral in 1485–1514 and has steep, narrow cobblestone streets.

The buildings are generally whitewashed and are surrounded by gardens of tropical flowers; they line the curving shore of the Port of Funchal and spread inland on the lower slopes of an amphitheater of mountains that reach 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) in elevation.