There is also a football memorial, dedicated to the city's greatest players, which includes Pelé, who spent the majority of his career with Santos Futebol Clube.

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.

One of the exiles brought by Amerigo Vespucci's expedition, Cosme Fernandes, had founded the trading village, which had boomed.

[6][7][8] In 1543, with the completion of the construction of a chapel on a hillock in honor of Santa Catarina by Luís de Góis, Brás Cubas ordered the port to be moved to the site of Enguaguaçu, which was calmer.

Export and import through its port have made it the modern city one finds today and turned it into the indispensable outlet for the production of the powerhouse that is São Paulo State.

It includes a flat area - Plain Coastal extension of the State of São Paulo - which has altitudes that rarely go above twenty meters above sea level, and an area composed of isolated hills called the Mass of São Vicente, the former home and endowed an urban illegal occupation with a mix of families characterized by high and low incomes, [citation needed] whose height does not exceed 200 meters above sea level.

Before the occupation of the area of the island by 'chácaras' - rural residences, and subsequently by urbanization, there was a vast flooded land covered by mangroves, the native Atlantic Forest, and coastal vegetation.

The 'Lagoa da Saudade' (Homesickness Lagoon), a pond located in one of the aforementioned hills, Morro Nova Cintra, was known to host a kind of caiman.

The lagoon is also a popular destination among families in the city due to its playgrounds, barbecue kiosks, picnic spots and green areas.

The disordered occupation of the hills represents both an environmental as well as a geological risk: the deforestation leads to frequent landslides, mainly from January to March, the traditional rainy season in the region.

Major water courses cut the island in the north, such as the Rio de São Jorge (St. George River), which suffers from the problems of pollution and silting due to the occupation of its banks by slums.

Santos lies in one of the few isolated regions of Brazil outside of the tropical Amazon Basin that receive more than 2,000 mm (79 in) of total average precipitation annually, although nearby Ubatuba, approximately 140 km (87 mi) to the east-northeast, is considerably wetter than Santos, receiving an average of 2,645 mm (104.1 in) of precipitation annually.

In the 21st century, the São Paulo state government has been exploring reinstating a regional rail network known as Trens Intercidades.