Connecting Avenida do Mar e das Comunidades Madeirenses to Largo da Igrejinha, and already in the connection with Rua Câmara Pestana, Avenida Zarco takes its name from the discoverer of the island, João Gonçalves Zarco. This sailor has a monument built and inaugurated, in 1930, in his honour, by the Madeiran sculptor Francisco Franco, in the place where the avenue comes across Avenida Arriaga. It was also in the thirties that the upper side of the Avenue was opened, connecting the port of the city to Rua Câmara Pestana, although it was a complicated task due to the council’s financial difficulties.

It is in the south sector of this avenue, where Zarco looks at the sea, that we find Palácio São Lourenço, a magnificent yellow building, where part of it is the official residence of the Representative of the Republic of Madeira, while the other part is for military servitude, working as the Army Headquarters. In this building is also placed the Military Museum, opened to the public, and where you can visit part of the military heritage of the Region.

More at north, close to the monument of João Gonçalves Zarco, you find one of the most emblematic coffee shops of the 20th century, in the cosmopolitan city. The writer Ferreira de Castro called it “The Corner of the World”, and the Golden Gate continues to do justice to that sentence, because in its terrace you can find several different cultures at the same time.

The upper side of the Avenue has, on the right, the headquarters of the most part of the Regional Government departments, where it is placed the Noble Hall and not at the Quinta Vigia, headquarters of the executive.

On the left, coming across Avenida Arriaga, you find the magnificent building of the Bank of Portugal, a work of the Estado Novo, in the intersection with Avenida Arriaga.