Top photo: Marcelo Martins

An 800m² mural by artist Eduardo Kobra, focusing on five Santos icons (the Coffee museum, the streetcars, Pelé and the port, depicted inside the city’s characteristic low walls), inaugurated on October 23, 2020, illustrates the facade of the Santos Convention Center, the most modern and comprehensive in the city.  

With a constructed area of 32,565.81m², the convention Center, officially opened on October 30, 2020, is located beside Avenida Mário Covas, near the ferryboat terminal that links Santos and Guarujá. 

Top photo: Raimundo Rosa

With around 49,000 titles, including veritable treasures from the world of comics, the Marcel Rodrigues Paes Comic Library is an important tool in motivating reading among all members of the public.

The collection is free to the public and offers children’s comics, manga, fanzines and the work of independent national authors. There are also examples in English and Spanish, as well as HQ comics for adults.

This is the departure point for the various schooner trips around Santos Bay, taking in Barra Fortress; Palmas island; Góes, Cheira Limão, and Sangava beaches, and Urubuqueçaba Island. On the stretch through the Estuary and Bertioga Channel, highlights are the port and warehouses, the old Port Authority (Codesp) buildings, Barnabé Island, the old Santos Air Base, and Diana Island. Genesis, Turismo no Mar and Bravotur tour agencies offer trips lasting betweeen 1hour 30 minutes and 3 hours 45 minutes.

Top photo: Marcelo Martins

Hosted in a beautiful neoclassical mansion from the early 20th century, the Benedicto Calixto Art Gallery is an important cultural space in the city, offering musical happy hours, courses, and various events for children and adults, especially on weekends.

The house, the last on the Santos coastline that retains the characteristics of the era of the coffee barons, served as a family residence, a retirement home, a boarding house for young women, and even a tenement, before being declared a public utility in 1979 and beginning its restoration seven years later.

On the ground floor are an art library and a permanent exhibition of works by Calixto, considered one of the greatest exponents of Brazilian painting from the early 20th century. The upper floor functions as a gallery for temporary exhibitions.

Top photo: Marcelo Martins

Trips set off on diverse routes in Santos Bay, taking in Barra Fortress; Palmas Island; Góes, Cheira Limão and Sangava beaches, and Urubuqueçaba Island. Highlights on the trip through the Estuary and Bertioga channel are the port and warehouses, the old Codesp (Docks Company of the State of São Paulo) buildings, Barnabé Island, the old Santos Air Base and Diana Island. Genesis, Turismo no Mar and Bravotur travel agencies offer routes that vary from 1hour 30 minutes to 3hours 45 minutes.

Top photo: Tadeu Nascimento

The 42,766m² park occupies a platform on the submarine emissary and advances 400m out to sea. It is the perfect spot to observe the sea and shoreline.

Top photo: Marcelo Martins

A zoological garden reproducing Atlantic Forest vegetation, the Municipal Orchid Garden boasts around 3500 orchids from 120 species, the vast majority fixed on trees. Inaugurated in 1945, it was the world’s largest open-air garden of it type at the time, and is currently the second most popular tourist attraction Santos, behind only the Aquarium.

Top photo: Susan Hortas

Installed in a mansion built in 1908, the Fishing Museum is one of the main tourist attractions in Santos and is part of historical-cultural heritage of the entire region. Eclectic in style, the building, constructed on the site of the former Fort August (18th century), houses an important collection on the aquatic environment. 

Among its attractions are: a 23m-long whale skeleton, giant squid, Beach Room, play wing, stuffed animals and a huge collection of sand from beaches in Brazil and from around the world.   

The city’s main beauty spot, these 7km of spotless beaches are fringed by the largest beachfront garden in the world (According to the Guinness Book of Records, 2000), and approximately 7.9 kilometers of cycle lanes. 5.335 meters long and 45 to 50 meters wide, the gardens boast 815 flower beds, housing several perennial species, predominantly yellow (Hemerocalis flava) and white (Spathiphiphyllum sp) lilies; red canna lilies (Canna indica), and white, yellow and multi-colored chrysanthemums (Crysanthemum sp). Engineer Saturnino de Brito first had the idea to build the gardens in 1914. In the following decade, gardens began to appear in front of the hotels, and in the 1930s the first stretch of beachfront gardens was built. The present curved design dates from 1960.

Main photo: Tadeu Nascimento

A favored spot for fishing enthusiasts and the perfect observation post to watch ships coming and going in the Santos Estuary, this is one of the city’s main tourist attractions.