Museum of Ethnography — Attraction in Ribeira Brava

The museum is well worth a visit and is also suitable for tourists on rainy days if you are in the neighbourhood anyway. It is located in a beautifully renovated building and the exhibition is very well organised. You learn a lot about life on the island in the past (fishing, agriculture, textiles, wickerwork, winegrowing, living etc.). The descriptions are in Portuguese and English, but you also get a printed guide to the museum in various languages at the entrance. As in every museum, there are guards in the rooms to ensure that visitors don't touch anything. I didn't feel observed. The exhibits are not in showcases, so everything feels very close, e.g. one room is like a bedroom with lots of valuable details. It's completely normal for this to be observed. From a tourist point of view, something about the levadas would be interesting, but there is no information on this. I didn't necessarily miss this. The entrance fee is a reasonable 3 euros, and you have to pay an additional fee for photos. We were interested and spent 1-1.5 hours there. You can...

Fine if you don't mind being quite obviously watched the whole time you are there. I saw some other comments about this and assumed that photography was not allowed and possibly that the people leaving the comments had tried to take some photos. But that is not the case. Photography is allowed, you just need to fill in a form to do so, and provide some identification. But even having done this, you still get followed from room to room. Or at least at emptier times perhaps, if you are one of the few people in any room at a given time. It is quite off-putting. Not sure if this is normal in Portugal. I've certainly never...

An excellent museum situated near the bus station. The entry price is a very reasonable €1.50 for over 65s. The exhibits are very well displayed with explanatory signage in English. There are some steps between floors but the friendly staff were quick to direct us to the lift. The wide range of exhibits covered local crafts and transport. I particularly liked the recreation of a Maderian bedroom. As well as the permanent exhibit there was a temporary exhibit of artwork. There is a shop attached...