Santos, São Paulo
municipality in the São Paulo state of Brazil
Santos (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈsɐ̃tus] , Saints), officially Municipality of Estância Balneária de Santos, is a city and municipality in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, founded in 1546 by the Portuguese nobleman Brás Cubas. It is located mostly on the island of São Vicente, which harbors both the city of Santos and the city of São Vicente. It is the main city in the metropolitan region of Baixada Santista. Santos has a population of 429,570 (2025 est.) in an area of 280.67 km2 (108.37 sq mi). The city is home to the Coffee Museum, where world coffee prices were once negotiated, as well as the Port of Santos, through which nearly 29% of the country's trade flow passes. Santos also has a football memorial, called Memorial das Conquistas (Memorial of Achievements, in English), which is dedicated to the city's greatest players, which includes Pelé, who spent the majority of his career with Santos Futebol Clube. Its beachfront garden, 5,335 m (5,834 yd) in length, figures in Guinness World Records as the largest beachfront garden in the world.
History
Early colonization
There are reports about the island of São Vicente just two years after the official discovery of Brazil, in 1502, with the expedition of Amerigo Vespucci to explore the Brazilian coast. When passing through the island formerly named Goiaó (or Guaiaó) by the natives, the expedition decided to give it the name of São Vicente, for the day's saint. However, in 1531, due to the decline of the Portuguese crown's business in India, Brazil rose on importance.
“Santos, São Paulo” enters the record as municipality in the São Paulo state of Brazil. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Santos, Paulo and municipality can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q81882. VIAF identifies the subject as 138378920. The Library of Congress control number is n80164288. Authority coordinates are -23.934, -46.329. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1546, 2025, 1502 and 1531.
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This entry incorporates text from “Santos, São Paulo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.