AskBiography Logo   Latest News  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Google Buzz  Became Fan - Facebook  Subscribe to RSSRSS   Bookmark and Share

Madeira

Madeira
Administration
Full nameMadeira
Official nameRegião Autonoma da Madeira
Motto 
( )
Demography
Density (pop.)308.5/km2 (799/sq mi)
Other information
Time zoneWET (UTC0)
- Summer (DST)WEST (UTC+1)
Area code(+351) 291 XXX XXX
ISO 3166 codePT

Madeira

Administration
Full nameMadeira
Official nameIlha de Madeira
Demography
Density (pop.)308.5/km2 (799/sq mi)
Other information
Time zoneWET (UTC0)
- Summer (DST)WEST (UTC+1)

     Home | Mountain | Madeira





Madeira (c-eniconməˈdɪərə or c-enməˈdɛərə ; -ptmɐˈðejɾɐlang or -ptmɐˈðɐjɾɐ) is a Portuguese archipelago that lies between and , just under 400 km north of Tenerife, Canary Islands, in the north Atlantic Ocean and an outermost region of the European Union. The archipelago comprises one of the two Autonomous regions of Portugal (the other being the Azores located to the northwest), that includes the islands of Madeira, Porto Santo, the Desertas and the Savage Islands.

Madeira was re-discovered by Portuguese sailors in the service of Infante D. Henrique (Henry the Navigator) in 1419, and settled after 1420. The archipelago is considered to be the first territorial discovery of the exploratory period of the Portuguese Age of Discovery.

Today, it is a popular year-round resort, being visited every year by about one million tourists, noted for its Madeira wine, flowers, landscapes and embroidery artisans, as well for its annual New Years celebrations that feature the largest fireworks show in the world, as officially recognized by the Guinness World Records, in 2006. The main harbour in Funchal is the leading Portuguese port in cruise liner dockings, being an important stopover for commercial and trans-Atlantic passenger cruises between Europe, the Caribbean and North America.

Madeira is currently the second richest region in Portugal, after Lisbon, with a GDP per capita of 103% of the European average.


Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Madeira?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 410 Gone in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Madeira?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10" in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Fatal error: Call to a member function children() on a non-object in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 260