Madeira

Madeira stamps available online at Io Collezionista. The volcanic archipelago, lying in the Atlantic less than 600 km from the African coast, may have been reached in antiquity by Phoenician navigators, but the history of Madeira really begins with the arrival of the Portuguese in 1419, who nicknamed it Ilha da Madeira, the island of wood, because of the dense forests that covered the whole area. Today Madeira is both a sought after tourist destination, its laurisilva woods a Unesco heritage site, and a well known industrial free trade zone, or FTZ, through which businesses can draw on substantial tax reliefs and exemptions.