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About halfway between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the beach town of Paraty (population 45,000) isn’t the easiest place to get to. It requires a four-hour, mostly mountain drive from any city, a 45-minute helicopter charter, or arrival by sea. It’s this relative isolation that keeps the tourist hordes and rampant development at bay, despite the city’s obvious appeal. On Brazil’s Costa Verde, with rainforest-covered mountains on one side and the emerald waters of Ilha Grande Bay on the other, Paraty (pronounced para-CHEE by locals), maintains more than 30 blocks as a historic district, a grid of pedestrian-only cobbled streets with 18th and 19th century whitewashed facades, many of which are remnants of Portuguese colonialism.
Start in the mid-1600s, the city prospered as a port during the country’s gold rush (many of the largest gold mines were located in the neighboring state of Minas Gerais)—and as a hub for the slave trade. African slaves not only worked in the mines, but built much of the city’s early infrastructure, such as its streets. Once gold stopped coming from Paraty for export in the early 1700s, the town continued to harvest sugar cane and produce cachaça, the national spirit, before shifting its economic focus to the coffee trade. In the late 19th century, Santos, 190 miles to the south, replaced Paraty as the country’s main coffee export port, and the city began to languish. “It fell off the map,” says Luana Assunção, the owner of Rio-based travel company Free Walker Tours. “It became isolated and impoverished. Many houses were abandoned.”
By the 1970s, a new highway and an influx of urban transplants had given Paraty a breath of new life. Lured by the area’s affordability, a number of artists, designers and other creative types have begun renovating the old mansions and opening a handful of galleries, boutiques, cafes and small hotels, turning the forgotten city into an enticing holiday destination.
“I was worried that mass tourism would jeopardize the future of culture and nature in Paraty, but it didn’t happen,” says nature photographer Dom João de Orleans e Bragança, who has been visiting Paraty since 1968 and now lives there. most of the time. He credits strict building codes for imbuing the city with a certain timeless quality, even after the pandemic, when the area’s second-home owners began spending more time in Paraty. “You’ll never see a skyscraper, and we don’t have big resorts or hotels here.”
