Ronaldo’s hotel on Madeira is a collaboration between the footballer and the Pestana hotel group. Photo: Business Insider
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Why you should visit Cristiano Ronaldo’s hometown of Madeira, an island where the iconic footballer is worshipped like a god and even has an airport, museum and square named after him
- The Manchester United footballer was born in Funchal on the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira, and often posts photos of his gorgeous hometown on Instagram
- From the Praça CR7 square to the CR7 Museu and Pestana CR7 hotel, Madeira is a living shrine to the star – he also quarantined there with partner Georgina Rodriguez
Madeira is the proud home of Cristiano Ronaldo. Photos: @visitmadeira/Instagram, @cristiano/Instagram
Within moments of touching down at the Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport in Funchal, you know you’ve arrived on an island that is infatuated with its biggest ever star.
From museums and statues to besotted locals, the island of Madeira is practically a shrine to the football icon.
Here’s why a trip to Madeira should be on the bucket list of every diehard Ronaldo fan …
1. Ronaldo is worshipped like a demigod on his home island – and is everywhere you look
Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates after a goal during a Premier League match this past September – the striker currently plays for Manchester United. Photo: AFP
Ronaldo was born in the São Pedro parish of Funchal, Madeira’s capital, and spent his formative years living in the nearby parish of Santo António with his parents, his older brother, and his two older sisters. He grew up poor, having to share a room with all three of his siblings.
His journey to soccer stardom began aged seven when he began playing for local club CF Andorinha, where his father was the kit manager. Next he signed for CD Nacional, his first professional club, before leaving Madeira to join Sporting Lisbon after a successful three-day trial.
The rest, of course, is history.
Ronaldo is undoubtedly Madeira’s most famous export – and the locals are incredibly proud of his sporting achievements. Photo: Business Insider
Despite having left as just a boy, Ronaldo is omnipresent on Madeira. He’s the island’s most famous export, outstripping its delicious fortified wine in notoriety, and the islanders really want you to know about it.
Inside the airport, which was renamed after the Manchester United star in 2017 and has his face as its logo, there is a shop which sells an array of Ronaldo-themed items. Outside lies the infamous bust of the striker which was so lamented when it was first revealed that it had to be replaced with a new one.
2. They named a town square after him
The CR7 Museu in Funchal, the capital of the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira, is run by his brother. Photo: Business Insider
Next to Funchal’s harbour is Praça CR7 – a town square named after Ronaldo. On the square is Ronaldo’s hotel as well as his own museum, which is run by Ronaldo’s brother, Hugo, and houses more than 200 trophies and countless other pieces of memorabilia.
There’s also a three-metre tall bronze statue of the man himself, which has an almost constant queue of people near it wanting to pose for photographs.
Venturing away from the harbour, Ronaldo’s presence doesn’t waiver. Splattered across Funchal and further afield are various pieces of artwork of the Portuguese icon, the most impressive being a graffiti mural of him celebrating his Euro 2016 win with Portugal. Shops are filled with Ronaldo shirts and restaurant owners proudly display photos of themselves and their staff with Ronaldo on the walls of their establishments.
The Estádio da Madeira is home to Ronaldo’s boyhood team. Photo: Football Stadium Gallery/Facebook
Up in the hills is the Estádio da Madeira – the home of Ronaldo’s boyhood team Nacional. The stadium is yet another homage to the striker, with its museum full of memorabilia from his brief spell at the club. The club’s academy is also named after him and features his photos on its entrance.
Ronaldo is everywhere you look on the island of Madeira – and you might even catch a glimpse of the man himself once in a while. Photo: @museucr7funchal/Instagram
Madeira, especially Funchal, is a shrine to Ronaldo, and his followers from across the world flock to the island to pay their respects to their idol.
3. It’s a genuinely beautiful place to visit and is warm all year round
With year-round good weather and gorgeous views, Madeira is a fabulous tourist destination in its own right. Photo: Getty Images
Not everybody who visits Madeira comes because of Ronaldo.
It is, after all, a beautiful island in its own right, rich in culture and history. It also boasts beautiful weather almost all year round, with temperatures rarely dropping below 16 degrees Celsius and peaking at 37, making it an ideal location for a sunny getaway.
However there is no doubt that Ronaldo’s rise to stardom has been of huge benefit to the island.
In 2005, two years after Ronaldo had first joined Manchester United, Madeira had over a million tourists visit the island, according to the University of Madeira. By 2017, the year in which Ronaldo won his fifth Ballon d’Or, that number had risen to over 1.5 million, according to Statista.
The view from the pool at Ronaldo’s Pestana CR7 hotel is pretty great. Photo: Business Insider
Ian Coates of Archipelago Choice, a travel agency specialising in holidays to the Azores, Madeira and Cape Verde, has seen Ronaldo’s impact on the island first hand.
“I would definitely say that’s true,” Coates explained when asked if he believes Ronaldo has positively impacted Madeira’s tourism industry.
“The success of Ronaldo reflects well on Madeira. If you look at his social media, his following his huge, and what he does is just constantly create awareness. People always link Ronaldo and Madeira, always.”
Ronaldo, in partnership with the local government, often posts about Madeira on his Instagram, which has over 375 million followers – more than any other person on the platform.
“He constantly keeps Madeira in the news,” Coates added.
A glimpse of the harbour-side pool at Cristiano Ronaldo’s hotel in Madeira. Photo: Business Insider
Museum director Mendes, who lives in Funchal, has also witnessed Ronaldo’s influence on the island, explaining that the museum has had “more than 400,000 visitors” since it opened in 2016.
“Ronaldo no doubt promotes our island,” Mendes adds.
4. You might actually bump into the man himself
Cristiano Ronaldo is the world’s first billionaire footballer, and likes to give back to his home country. Photo: @museucr7funchal/Instagram
In Portugal, family is seen as the foundation of the country’s social structure, while families also tend to stick close together in terms of where they live throughout many generations.
Both are true of Ronaldo, who owns a US$9.7 million, seven-story mansion on Funchal’s harbour, where he spent a large chunk of the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic with his partner, Georgina Rodriguez, and his four children.
Ronaldo has also donated plenty of his own money to Madeira over the years.
Amid the pandemic in 2020, he donated five ventilators to the island’s Regional Health Service. In 2016, he donated US$100,000 to the island after a forest fire killed three and left others homeless. In 2010, when 51 people were killed in floods and mudslides, he played in a charity soccer match against Porto to raise funds for those affected.
“I was born and raised on the island. It’s given me so much. This is why I want to make myself available to help in whatever possible way,” he said at the time of the floods.
A Cristiano Ronaldo statue made of chocolate inside the CR7 Museu on Madeira. Photo: Business Insider
When Ronaldo first left Madeira as a boy for Lisbon, he often travelled back to the island to visit, missing his family and the “familiarity of living in a neighbourhood where most of the roofs are an Iberian orange” and “no one needs to know the names of the roads because every family lives in the same house it has always lived in,” according to The New York Times.
Though he eventually overcame his homesickness and went on to conquer the world, he has always made it clear where home is.
“Never forget where you came from,” Ronaldo wrote in an Instagram post of himself posing on the island last April.
“Home sweet home.”
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