Paraty

The village of Paraty was founded in 1597; it became a town in 1660. Its fortune came from the mountains behind it. After gold was discovered in Minas Gerais in 1696, Paraty became the port from which gold was shipped to Rio de Janeiro and on to Portugal, and the Caminho do Ouro, or Gold Trail, was built over the Serra do Mar, paved with large stones on the steep sections. Mule trains carried gold down to the coast and took supplies, miners and enslaved Africans up to the mines.

The trade did not last. Pirates in the islands of the bay attacked the gold ships, a safer overland route to Rio replaced the trail, and as the gold ran out in the late 18th century Paraty declined. Cachaça kept it going — by 1820 over 150 stills were working in the region — and the town gained city status in 1844, but it never regained its old importance. Isolated by the mountains, Paraty slept, and its colonial streets survived almost untouched.

In the 20th century road links to Rio and São Paulo brought the town back into contact with the world, and tourism followed. In 2019 UNESCO inscribed Paraty and Ilha Grande as a mixed cultural and natural World Heritage Site, covering the historic centre and the surrounding Atlantic Forest.

The historic centre is a grid of whitewashed houses with painted doors and windows behind seawalls on the bay. At the highest tides, around the full moon, seawater pours in through openings in the seawalls and floods the lower streets for a short time, usually only 15 to 25 centimetres deep. Four baroque churches reflect the old social order: Santa Rita was built for freed slaves and freemen, Nossa Senhora do Rosário e São Benedito by enslaved Africans, the chapel of Nossa Senhora das Dores dates from 1800, and the large Matriz of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios, completed in 1873, for the town as a whole.

Paraty's year runs on festivals. The Festa do Divino Espírito Santo is perhaps one of the most traditional in Brazil, the feast of São Benedito is held in December, and the Bloco da Lama turns the end of Jabaquara beach into a mud bath before Carnival. Since 2003 FLIP has made the town one of Brazil's main literary meeting places, and galleries and craft workshops fill many of the colonial houses.

Beyond the centre, the municipality includes Caiçara fishing villages, as well as an Indigenous village and a quilombo settlement founded by the descendants of enslaved Africans.

The 2022 census counted about 45,000 people in the municipality, which covers more than 900 square kilometres of coast, islands and mountain forest; most live in the town and its newer districts outside the historic centre, and the rest in villages along the coast and in the hills. Tourism is the main business — guesthouses, restaurants, boat trips, shops and festivals — alongside fishing and the cachaça distilleries.

The historic centre itself has few permanent residents and many guesthouses and shops; local life is concentrated in the surrounding neighbourhoods, around the bus station and in the villages. The rhythm follows the seasons: quiet weekdays outside the holidays, crowded summer weekends, Carnival and New Year, and peaks for FLIP and the religious festivals. Much of the municipality lies inside the national park and other protected areas, which draw hikers and boat trips but also limit new building. Large parts of the municipality are protected, which shapes where building is allowed and how traditional communities can use the land and sea.

Cachaça is Paraty's signature. Before the gold rush, the region concentrated on cane spirit rather than sugar, and Paraty's cachaça was so well known that in the early 20th century cachaça itself was sometimes simply called parati. In 2007 the cachaça of Paraty received a protected indication of origin, and shops in the historic centre stock dozens of local brands, from clear, unaged spirits to versions aged in wood, as well as liqueurs. Distilleries still work in the hills behind the town, and some welcome visitors to see how the spirit is made and to taste it.

The cooking is coastal. Restaurants serve fish and seafood from the bay, grilled or in stews, and fried shrimp, usually with rice and farofa, toasted cassava flour. Beach restaurants in Trindade and the villages grill the day's catch. The caipirinha, made here with local cachaça, is the drink of choice, and stalls in the centre sell sweets and snacks to evening crowds.