Casa De Cristovao Colombo

Porto Santo is a small island northeast of Madeira, and the town of Vila Baleira is its only real settlement. In a quiet lane behind the church of Nossa Senhora da Piedade stands a modest house that the island presents as the home of Christopher Columbus. It is now a small museum, and visiting it is a pleasant way to understand how this tiny, dry island fits into the story of the great voyages.

The link between Columbus and Porto Santo rests on a marriage. In the late 1470s the young Genoese sailor, who was then working in the Atlantic trade between Lisbon and Madeira, married Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrelo, the first captain-donatary of Porto Santo, who had colonised the island for the Portuguese crown. The couple are generally believed to have lived on the island for a time, and the museum builds on that tradition. Whether this particular house was in fact their home is impossible to prove, and the exhibition is honest about the uncertainty; the building itself is old, with Gothic-style windows and thick walls typical of the early settlers' houses, and it gives a good sense of how islanders lived.

The museum is small and can be seen in under an hour. Inside, you find panels explaining Columbus's life and voyages, diagrams of his routes, copies of 15th- and 16th-century maps, and a model of a ship of the type used at the time. There are portraits of the explorer, some of which are described as alleged, since no confirmed likeness of him exists. One curiosity is the matamorra, a pit cut into the floor and used for storing grain, which shows how households protected their food on an island that suffered from drought and from pirate raids. The exhibition also touches on Portuguese navigation and the role of Madeira and Porto Santo as stepping stones in the Atlantic.

Vila Baleira is compact and easy to walk. The main square, Largo do Pelourinho, is lined with cafes, and the church of Nossa Senhora da Piedade stands close by. Porto Santo is mainly famous for its nine-kilometre golden beach, one of the finest in Portugal, and the sea here is calm and warm in summer, which makes the island popular for family holidays. Elsewhere on the island you can visit the basalt organ, a cliff of columnar basalt, the Ponta da Calheta at the western end with its beach, and the small Zimbralinho beach.

Opening hours are limited, with a midday break and shorter hours on Sunday, and the museum is closed on Mondays, so check before you go. Visit early in the day, before the heat, then spend the afternoon on the beach. The museum suits history buffs and families with children who are curious about the Age of Discovery.