Vicente's Photography Museum

Vicente's Photography Museum was the first photographic studio to open in Portugal. The founder of the photographic studios, Vicente Gomes da Silva, initiated his photographic activity in the middle of the 19th century when he started to dabble with daguerreotype photographic experiments in 1848. Four years later in 1852 he began practise as a professional photographer. The studios remain where they had first been started: in the quaint and picturesque open patio salon at the start of the Rua da Carreira in central Funchal.
Today the Vicentes Photographic Studio is controlled by the Regional Government of Madeira, who has since restored it to the character of the old studio. Besides the wide range of photographic equipment on display there are also thousands of negatives and glass plates.
The interesting array of photographs is a precious reminder and recollection of what may have been forgotten in Madeira's rich past such as the arrival of the first water plane in Madeira, the holiday snaps of Churchill, or George Bernard Shaw, or the photos of the last few years of the life of the last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Being the oldest photographic museum of the Iberian Peninsula it is a unique and definite must for all lovers of the art of photography and for those who are simply fascinated by history of days gone by.