Doors of Funchal

It starts at the Jardim Municipal, the big garden in the middle of town, and finishes on Rua de Santa Maria in the old quarter, a few streets from where you began and right where the restaurants are.

2.4 km at your own pace, almost all of it flat. The old streets are laid with calçada, small polished basalt stones that are beautiful and slippery in smooth-soled shoes. Trainers are plenty.

English, all of it, one voice throughout. Tap the play button on this page to hear the opening of the tour for free, long enough to know whether you want two hours of it. The map above shows the whole route before you pay.

The walking is about forty minutes. The rest is you: standing in front of the cathedral, going through the market, sitting down for a coffee. Nothing is timed and nothing runs out: stop as long as you like and the tour waits.

A pushchair, yes, with some bumping over the cobbles. A wheelchair is harder: the lanes in the old town are cobbled and the pavements narrow, though the first half through the garden and the main streets is fine.

Nothing you have to pay to hear the tour. The churches and the streets are free; the market may ask a small entrance fee at the door. Every stop is written to work from the outside, so a place that is closed never costs you a stop.

No. The painted doors of Rua de Santa Maria are the last stop and the reason for the name, but the walk before them is the city that built them: a garden on the ruins of a monastery, a Jesuit college with cannon towers, and a cathedral made of black volcanic stone.

Yes, and plenty of people do. They share a corner of the same neighbourhood and tell completely different stories. This one is the city, the other is the sea. Morning for one, late afternoon for the other, lunch in between.

No. Download the tour on wifi beforehand and it runs on GPS alone, which costs nothing and works with no signal and no Portuguese SIM.

Easily. The start is about twenty minutes on foot from the cruise terminal along the seafront, or five in a taxi, and the walk itself is two hours. Allow three and a half from gangway to gangway and you have time for lunch in the old town on the way back.

Rain in Funchal is short and the route passes plenty of doorways and cafés to wait it out in, though the cobbles get slippery, so go slowly. Evenings work: the doors are lit and the old town is at its liveliest. Children manage it fine, as it is short, flat and ends among restaurants, though the audio is written for adults.