Pearl of the Atlantic

Today we're taking a trip to the verdant cliffs at the edge of Madeira, the principal island of the Portuguese archipelago that's also called Madeira, roughly 515 kilometres west of Morocco in the North Atlantic. These terraced hillsides are just outside the village of Ponta Delgada, on the north coast of the island. Originally uninhabited, Madeira and the other islands in this chain were settled by the Portuguese in the early 1400s and became a main stopover for European explorers during the so-called Age of Discovery.
© Jan Wlodarczyk/Alamy