An independent history, on an old hotel's address

This site is an independent record of the kings, queens, emperors and empresses who came to the island of Madeira — to winter, to convalesce, and in several cases to die. It is a work of history. It sells nothing and speaks for no one.

Why this address

The domain madeiraregency.pt once belonged to a Funchal hotel group — the Madeira Regency, or “Regency Hotels & Resorts” — whose website went dark many years ago after the group ran into financial trouble and closed. Rather than leave a long-lived address sitting empty, we have given it a second life: a place to tell a genuinely remarkable, and largely untold, piece of the island's history.

We kept the name because it is where people still arrive. But to be completely clear about what this is — and is not — here is the honest account.

What happened to the Madeira Regency hotels

The old group's three Funchal properties all went their separate ways, and none of them is run by this website:

• The Madeira Regency Palace (the five-star flagship on Estrada Monumental) closed in 2015 and reopened in 2017 as the Pestana Royal.
• The Madeira Regency Club was rebuilt and reopened in 2021 as NEXT by Savoy Signature.
• The Madeira Regency Cliff still operates, independently, under the Regency name — at its own site, regencycliff.com. It has nothing to do with this website.

If you were looking to book one of those hotels, follow the links above to their real owners. You won't be able to book anything here, because we are not a hotel.

What this is not

This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of any hotel — including the Madeira Regency Cliff, Belmond Reid's Palace, the Pestana group, Savoy Signature, or any other property. We take no bookings and handle no payments. Where we mention a hotel, a museum or a tour, we link to its real operator for your convenience. Should any such link ever become a paid affiliate link, we will say so plainly on the page.

How this is made

The history here is compiled from public records — encyclopaedias, museum and parish accounts, and the press. Where the record is uncertain, or a story is island tradition rather than documented fact, we try to say so. History gets revised; where this account is shown to be wrong, it will be put right.

An old name, kept honestly — and pointed at something worth remembering. The editors