Monumento ao Trabalhador Madeirense

The place

Every channel you walk on this island was cut into basalt by hand, and almost nothing on the island tells you by whom. From the sixteenth century the work was done for a sugar economy that needed water moved from the wet north to the dry south, and the published histories record who did it: Madeiran labourers, convicts exiled from mainland Portugal, and enslaved people from Africa and the Canary Islands. The statue is a workman stripped to the waist, standing on the outer wall of Santa Catarina Park above the marina. Most people walk past it on the way to the cable car.

When to come

Any time — it is outdoors, unfenced and never closes. Late afternoon puts the light behind it and the harbour below.

Worth knowing

• On the park wall along Avenida Sá Carneiro, not inside the gardens — easy to walk straight past
• Five minutes uphill from the marina; see it with the park rather than making a separate trip
• Pedro dos Anjos Teixeira sculpted it and it has stood here since 1979; published dates for it vary, so treat a different year with suspicion