Teleférico do Funchal
Gondola lift climbing from the seafront old town to a hillside parish, with harbour and rooftop views.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Teleférico do Funchal in Madeira looks past the gondola to the machine that worked this hillside before it: a steam rack railway designed by Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard, the engineer behind Lisbon's Santa Justa Lift. It follows the line from its first stretch in the eighteen nineties up toward Terreiro da Luta, and asks why a railway that climbed for half a century vanished. Best heard with a window seat on the way up.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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