Monte Palace Tropical Gardens

Jose Berardo is one of the richest men in Portugal and he was born in Funchal, Madeira. Without a doubt, he is a collector or many things.  Apparently he began with stamps, postcards and matchboxes as a school boy and it's obvious he has never stopped collecting. In 1987 he acquired Monte Palace in the hills above Funchal and began to re-establish the gardens and fill the property with some of his collections.

Originally established as a pleasure estate by the English Consul Charles Murray in the 18th Century it became the Monte Palace Hotel following it's purchase by Alfredo Rodrigues in 1897.  When he passed away in 1943, the hotel closed and the gardens languished as his family did not share his passion.

We took the cable car to the garden and this brings you to an entrance at the top of the gardens.  Here there is a museum housing the first two of Berardo's collections, semi-precious gems and African carvings.  Both collections were exquisite, breath-taking and inspiring.  I could spend days in those rooms and not feel as if I had taken everything in, no matter how hard I looked.  It isn't the biggest museum but it is jam packed.  Any more and it would have been too much to even begin to take in.

I had an older phone back then and it didn't take such good photo's and I struggled to get good ones of the crystals.  This room was beautiful, lots of sparkles.  I have never seen so many impressive specimens and I went to a mining college with it's own geological museum.  Berardo founded a mining company and I think he must have had access to the best specimen's from his own mines as well as access to those for sale.

Before we started moving down the garden, we visited an ancient olive tree, planted in 300BC by the Romans.  I love ancient trees and this one was amazing with it's gnarled shape.  It actually has a piece of granite stuck inside it's trunk!

If we had been interested solely in plants, I have no idea what we would have thought of the garden.  I think September was completely the wrong time of year to see the garden in bloom.  It was very hot and the garden slowly eased down the hillside, cooled by huge trees as we meandered down a maze of walkways.

Berardo spent time in both Japan and China and the garden has been heavily influenced in places by both cultures and contains a number of sculptures and other elements.  Chinese lanterns, Fo dogs, warrior statues and red fenced walkways.

There is a representation of the balcony from Romeo and Juliet.  We enjoyed that and I imagine many other couples have too!

Then you find yourself in a room under an aviary with strange creatures and colourful murals.

Or you get a glimpse across at a blue wall that snares your attention with the pristine intensity of it's colour through the trees.

And through the trees, water cascades and cools.

He collected tiles

And sculptures

And arches

even gates...

Then you reach a plateau with the Palace and it's very grand.  Waterways converging over archways, into a waterfall.  Sculpture everywhere.

Keep going and there is more...  Koi

And there are viewpoints.  From here you can see the city

And here, atop a wall, it looks like a less exciting view of a empty road.  Except this is the route the toboggans take and it is thrilling to watch people being taken down and seeing the different reactions of the occupants.

I know this is holiday snap central...  but this is only a tiny amount of the photos I took and an even smaller amount of the photos I could have taken.  Every object deserved attention to all it's details and I only scratched the surface of the things I adored about this place.  I would go back again and again and each time, different details would jump out at me.

I imagine there is a best time of year to see the plants, probably in spring, before things get too hot.

The only tip I would give would be, for people who like me, prefer to go down, rather than up...  There is one of those road trains that will take you from the central plateau back up to the top for a small fee.  I noted it early in our visit and made sure that we finished to take advantage of it.  We passed a number of hot and tired looking people climbing their way back up the wider track used by the road train.  I felt a little like pampered royalty as we trundled past (I didn't give them a royal wave, they didn't look like they would have appreciated it).

I have made a pinterest board of other peoples photos, probably not taken with a mobile phone.  There are none of the museum however and most of the photos are of the grand central area by the palazzo.