Pearl of the Atlantic

Today we're taking a trip to the cliffs at the edge of Madeira, the main island of the Portuguese archipelago - also called Madeira - roughly 320 miles west of Morocco. These terraced hillsides are just outside the village of Ponta Delgada, on the north coast. Originally uninhabited, Madeira and the other islands in this chain were settled by the Portuguese in the early 1400s and became a stopover for European explorers during the so-called Age of Discovery.
© Jan Wlodarczyk/Alamy