Historic routes
Caminhos reais: Madeira's royal roads
Three of Madeira's royal roads are classified trails with an official status. The rest have none, which is not the same thing as being open.
In short
- The caminhos reais are the island's public road network from before 1910, walked and ridden long before any modern road existed.
- Most of it is abandoned. The association that surveys the network puts what survives at roughly 400 km.
- 3 of them are classified walking trails today, and 2 of those need a reservation.
- Everything outside those 3 has no official status at all: no fee, no reservation, and no authority publishing whether it is walkable.
What is a caminho real?
A caminho real is a public road of the Crown: the paved, stepped network that carried people, post and goods between settlements before the modern road system existed.
They are called royal because they were built under the monarchy, which ended in 1910. Most run steeply, in stone, between a coastal village and the ridge above it, because that was the shape of the journeys they were built for.
They are not levadas, and the confusion is common enough to be worth a sentence. A levada is a water channel with a maintenance path beside it, cut to move water. A caminho real is a road, cut to move people.
If you are after the water channels instead, this explains what a levada is.
How much of the network survives
The association that documents the network puts the surviving extent at roughly 400 km, spread across the island in fragments of very different condition.
That figure is the association's own survey, not a government register, and it is worth saying plainly that no official register of the network exists. Nobody in government maintains a list of which royal roads are still there.
The survey work is done by the Associação do Caminho Real, founded in February 2017.
Which caminhos reais are official trails today?
3, and they are the only ones with an official status of any kind.
Each is a classified route in its own right, with a code, a published state and, for 2 of them, a reservation. What follows is what makes each one a royal road rather than a repeat of its trail page.
| Trail | Route | Distance | Reservation |
|---|---|---|---|
| PR3.1 Caminho Real do Monte | Ribeira das Cales to Monte | 4.2 km | Not required |
| PR12 Caminho Real da Encumeada | Boca da Corrida to Encumeada | 12.5 km | Required |
| PR19 Caminho Real do Paul do Mar | Prazeres to Paul do Mar | 1.8 km | Required |
This is the part of the network that is mapped at all. In gold, 4 island-crossing royal roads that appear on public maps and not in our own catalogue, about 116 km of them. In green, the 5 sections we hold, 21.1 km. The faint lines behind are the modern walking network, for scale.
What the picture cannot show is the rest. The association surveys roughly 400 km; four crossing routes and a few short sections are all that anyone has put on a map. The round-island Caminho Real 23 is not among them, which is why this page can describe it and not draw it.
Track and waypoints from OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
Download the royal roads as a file
One file, everything the map above draws: 4 royal roads as public maps record them, 116 km, plus the 5 sections in our own catalogue, 21.1 km.
Every line stays a separate track, because on the ground they are separate. Most of the historic network was never mapped and is in no file, ours included.
One file, every mapped section as its own track. Nothing is joined where no mapped path exists on the ground.
Do you need a booking to walk one?
For 2 of the 3 classified ones, yes. For everything else in the network, there is nothing to book.
Charges and reservations attach to a classification, not to a path. An unclassified royal road has no fee because no instrument sets one, which is a description of the paperwork and not a statement that the route is maintained or safe.
For what a slot costs and how to reserve one, see what SIMplifica costs and how to book. For the trails that are not charged at all: Which trails are free.
What is Caminho Real 23?
Caminho Real 23 is the route around the whole island, roughly 180 km, documented by the association that surveys the network.
Our own catalogue does not map the whole of it, and it is better to say so than to let a search land somewhere disappointing. What it holds is a 1.1 km waymarked section on the north coast, between Achada do Gramacho and Calhau de São Jorge.
That piece has its own page: the waymarked section at Achada do Gramacho.
A second fragment, the 1.95 km between Boaventura and Arco de São Jorge, is in the catalogue for the same reason: it is a piece of the network somebody can actually walk today, not the network itself. the Boaventura section.
What official status do the rest of them have?
None, and this is the single most useful thing to know about them.
Verified against IFCN's register of classified walking routes as published on 24 July 2026: outside the 3 classified sections, no royal road appears on it. No entry means no published state, no closure notice, no fee, no reservation and no official waymarking.
That is a claim about the register and nothing else. It does not mean those paths are impassable, unmaintained or dangerous. It means no authority publishes an answer, so there is nobody to check with before you go.
For the 3 that are classified, the current state is here: the Madeira trail status page. classified walking routes.
Walking a road nobody classifies
The practical difference is where the judgement sits. On a classified trail an institution has walked it, graded it, and will announce when it shuts. On an unclassified royal road none of that happens, and the absence is silent: there is no notice saying a bridge went, because there is no channel that would carry one.
Stone that has been in place for two centuries fails in ways that are hard to see from above. Steps undercut by water, sections lost to vegetation, and a path that reads as continuous on a map because nobody has recorded that it is not.
None of that is an argument against walking them. It is an argument for treating the unclassified ones as terrain rather than as trails, and for keeping the classified ones as the part of the plan you can actually verify.
Questions about the caminhos reais
How many caminhos reais are official trails?
3: the Caminho Real do Monte, the Caminho Real da Encumeada and the Caminho Real do Paul do Mar. They are the only royal roads with a code in IFCN's register of classified walking routes.
Can I walk the full Caminho Real 23 around the island?
Sections of it, yes. The full circuit is documented by the association that surveys the network, not by any authority, and much of the old line is lost or absorbed into modern roads. No institution publishes whether the whole route is passable.
Are the royal roads older than the levadas?
They overlap. Both networks grew over centuries of settlement, and in several places a royal road and a levada path run within sight of each other. The roads carried people, the channels carried water.
Do the unclassified ones cost anything?
No. Fees attach to a classification, so a path without one has no charge. That is a fact about the fee regime and not a statement about the condition of the path.
Why are so few of them classified?
Classification carries an obligation to maintain and to publish a status, so it is applied to a small set. The register is public and currently lists no royal road beyond the 3 named above.