The historic center of the city, as well as four areas of the Atlantic Forest, were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019 under the title "Paraty and Ilha Grande".

More than 80% of its territory is protected by conservation units:[6] Nearby is the Serra do Mar State Park of São Paulo.

The four quarters of the coat of arms symbolize the following: The flora which supports the red scroll are a branch of coffee tree and a stalk of sugarcane.

Even today the Brazilian Mullet (Mugil brasiliensis) still come back to spawn in the rivers that spill into the Bay of Paraty.

Eventually a safer overland route from Minas Gerais to Rio de Janeiro was created because of these pirate raids.

Another smaller revival came late in the 19th century with the production of cachaça, which is a sugarcane-derived spirit best known today as the basis for Brazil's most famous cocktail, the caipirinha.

Since then, Paraty has been out of the mainstream, which is why it did not change for centuries, until a paved road was built from Rio de Janeiro to Santos, near São Paulo, in the 1970s.

Construction was overseen by the presiding priest, Father Antonio Xavier da Silva Braga.

Its construction began in 1646 when a woman named Maria Jácome de Melo donated the land for the construction of the village of Paraty, however she demanded two conditions: The first was the building of a chapel dedicated to Nossa Senhora dos Remédios and the second was that no one would harm the Indians that lived in the area at that time.

Additionally, there is a very small chapel called Capela da Generosa which according to legend, was constructed in 1901 by the order of a generous female patron, in memory of Teodoro.

Although in recent years the tourist trade has grown there due to the pristine beaches in the area and Paraty-Mirim now has a few small inns, a couple of restaurant/bars and offers boat tours.

This church is unique in that it was built on top of a huge boulder in the small hamlet of Penha, just outside Paraty.

Constructed in the beginning of the 18th century, the building was part of a larger Forte Patitiba, the other blockhouse built in the city for defense of the harbor.

There are also many colorful colonial houses (refurbished in most cases), many of which have been transformed into shops, pousadas (Brazilian bed-and-breakfasts), restaurants and bars.

Once a month when there is a full moon and the tide is high, seawater rises above its normal levels and pours into the Historic Center District through special openings in the seawalls that separate the city from the harbor.

The water is usually only 6 to 10 inches (15 to 25 cm) deep, and a few merchants near the seawall put out small bridges to span the flooded streets for the benefit of pedestrians.

The traditional music event has already brought names like Stanley Jordan, Gary Brown, Ed Motta, Leo Gandelman, Eumir Deodato, Joshua Redman, Pau Brasil Group, Dianne Reaves, Mike Stern, Naná Vasconcellos, Nuno Mindelis, Jacques Morelenbaum, Stanley Clarke, and many other leading names in jazz, blues, soul and R & B from Brazil and the world.

In the Salon of Indigenous Culture, visitors can see the “carpets” made of colored sawdust and flower petals used during the festival of Corpus Christi in June.

Paraty played the part of the Bahian town of Ilhéus in the 1983 Bruno Barreto film Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, starring Sônia Braga and Marcello Mastroianni.

[13] Paraty was also the set for Isle Esme (the place of Edward and Bella's honeymoon) in the movie The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn.

[14] Paraty airport can be reached from Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo by chartered helicopter or small commercial and private aircraft because presently it has no scheduled flights.

Another possibility of transport is to arrive by sea by way of a sailboat or cruise ship from Rio de Janeiro, Angra dos Reis and Ilha Grande.