🇧🇷 Brazil · North (Amazon)
In the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, where the green-blue water of the Tapajós River meets the brown water of the giant Amazon, sits Santarém, the big city of western Pará. Founded on an old Indigenous village, it's one of the oldest towns in the Amazon and, for centuries, was an obligatory stop on the run between Belém and Manaus. Today it combines the air of a quiet river town with the role of gateway to some of the most surprising landscapes in the rainforest.
Its greatest treasure is right next door: Alter do Chão, the riverside village of white-sand beaches nicknamed the 'Amazonian Caribbean', with its famous Ilha do Amor. But Santarém offers much more: the Meeting of the Waters phenomenon in front of its waterfront, where Tapajós and Amazon run side by side without mixing; the Floresta Nacional do Tapajós, with giant trees and traditional communities; the river beaches that emerge in the dry season; and the chance to board a scheduled boat for the real Amazonian crossing in a hammock.
This guide walks through Santarém with a practical, warm eye: how to get around, what to see in town and nearby, how to reach Alter do Chão and the forest, where to sleep and eat, and when to travel to catch the beaches at their best. Santarém is the less crowded Amazon, the one still lived at the pace of the river.
Long before the Europeans arrived, the Santarém region was inhabited by the Tapajós (or Tapajó), an Indigenous people who developed one of the most remarkable ceramic cultures of the pre-Columbian Amazon, the so-called Tapajonic culture, known for its elaborate pottery. The Portuguese reached the area in the 17th century; in 1661 the Jesuits founded a mission there (the village of the Tapajós), and in 1758 the site was raised to town status with the name Santarém, after the Portuguese town of the same name. Thanks to its location where the Tapajós meets the Amazon, Santarém became a key port and trading centre of the Amazon. During the rubber cycle, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it went through a period of prosperity. A curious chapter of its history is the arrival, after the American Civil War, of Confederate settlers from the southern United States who set up in the region. In the 20th century, Santarém grew with Amazon shipping, fishing, logging and, more recently, the advance of soy along the BR-163 highway and the grain port, which has sparked debate about the environmental impact on the forest. Today it's the main city of western Pará and the base for the region's nature tourism. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The great state of the eastern Amazon: gateway of the Amazon River to the Atlantic, with Belém and its Ver-o-Peso, the island of Marajó and its buffaloes, and the freshwater beaches of Alter do Chão, the 'Amazonian Caribbean'.
Read the history of Pará →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before the Europeans arrived, the region where Santarém stands today was inhabited by the Tapajós (or Tapajó), an Indigenous people who gave their name to the great Tapajós River and who developed one of the most remarkable cultures of the pre-Columbian Amazon. They lived where the Tapajós meets the Amazon, a spot of enormous fishing wealth and strategic value, and formed a large, complex society, described by the first European chroniclers as populous and well organised.
This people's most impressive legacy is the so-called Tapajonic culture, known above all for its pottery. The Tapajós produced elaborate, beautiful pieces —vessels, figurines, caryatids and the famous 'muiraquitãs' (green stone amulets in animal shapes)—, decorated with modelled and applied human and animal figures. These pieces are among the most sophisticated ceramic expressions of the ancient Amazon and are kept today in museums, including the collection of the Centro Cultural João Fona, in Santarém itself.
The discovery of these remains, together with the so-called 'terras pretas' (very fertile anthropogenic black soils, formed by millennia of human occupation), fed the idea that the Amazon was home to far larger and better-organised populations than long believed. The Santarém region is, in that sense, one of the keys to understanding the historical depth of human occupation in the rainforest.
A settled Portuguese presence where the Tapajós meets the Amazon began in the 17th century, as part of the expansion across the Amazon that set out from Belém, founded in 1616. In 1661, the Jesuit priest António Vieira pushed for a religious mission in the village of the Tapajós people, aiming to convert the Indigenous population and shore up the Portuguese Crown's hold on the lower Amazon region.
That mission, known as the village of the Tapajós, was the seed of the future city. For almost a century, the site worked as an Indigenous mission village under religious administration, in a period marked by tensions between missionary projects, settler interests and the impact of disease and pressure on the native population.
The change of status came in the 18th century, as part of the reforms of the Marquis of Pombal, which reorganised the Portuguese Amazon, expelled the Jesuits and turned many mission villages into civil towns. In 1758, the site was raised to town status with the name Santarém, after the Portuguese town of the same name on the banks of the Tagus. With that name and rank it joined the network of towns the Crown was promoting to assert sovereignty over the immense Amazonian territory.
Through the 19th century, Santarém grew at the pace of the Amazonian economy and, above all, of the rubber boom. Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the rush for latex tapped from seringueira trees transformed the whole Amazon: cities such as Manaus and Belém enjoyed spectacular prosperity, and Santarém, thanks to its strategic position as a port on the Amazon, benefited from the intense river traffic of the period, establishing itself as the commercial centre of western Pará.
A singular chapter of Santarém's history opened after the American Civil War (1861-1865). With the southern states defeated, a group of Confederate settlers chose to emigrate rather than live under the new order, and several hundred settled in different parts of Brazil, where Emperor Pedro II encouraged immigration. One of those groups settled in the Santarém region, drawn by the land and the promise of a fresh start. Although many ended up going home or dispersing, they left traces in surnames and in local memory.
The rubber cycle went into crisis in the early 20th century, when Southeast Asian plantations —grown from seeds taken out of the Amazon— broke the Brazilian monopoly and sank prices. Santarém, like the whole region, then went through harder times, but kept its role as a port and service centre for the lower Amazon, sustained by fishing, farming and river trade.
Through the 20th century, Santarém established itself as the main city of western Pará and a hub of Amazon shipping. Fishing, logging, farming and river trade sustained its growth, while the city expanded its population and its services and connected with Belém and Manaus through the big scheduled boats that still run the Amazon today.
A turning point came with overland integration. The construction and, already in the 21st century, the paving of the BR-163 highway, which links Santarém with southern Mato Grosso across the Amazon, transformed the regional economy by connecting the Santarém port with Brazil's Central-West agricultural frontier. The building of a large grain port for exporting soy made Santarém a strategic outlet for farm produce heading to international markets.
That development brought an intense environmental and social debate. The spread of soy and of the farming frontier, alongside the advance of the highway, have been linked to pressure on the forest, deforestation and land conflicts with traditional and Indigenous communities. At the same time, the region strengthened conservation and nature tourism initiatives —such as the Floresta Nacional do Tapajós and the ecotourism of Alter do Chão— which seek a development model compatible with preserving the Amazon. Santarém lives today with that tension between agribusiness, conservation and tourism, in one of the most sensitive regions on the planet.
If in the past Santarém's history turned on Indigenous peoples, missions, rubber and river trade, in recent decades a new chapter has transformed it: nature tourism. The lead in that shift is Alter do Chão, the riverside village on the Tapajós that, thanks to its white-sand beaches and green-blue water that emerge in the dry season, went from a quiet fishing village to one of the most sought-after destinations in the Brazilian Amazon.
The nickname 'Amazonian Caribbean' and the recognition of its beauty —including mentions in international media that singled out its river beaches— put Alter do Chão and Santarém on the tourism map. The Ilha do Amor, the boat trips along the Tapajós and the igapós, and the closeness of the Floresta Nacional do Tapajós made the region a reference for ecotourism and community-based tourism, in which traditional communities take part by offering guides, lodging and crafts.
And so Santarém today combines several identities: the historic port and service city of western Pará; the agribusiness hub connected by the BR-163; and the gateway to an Amazonian landscape of beaches, forest and rivers that draws travellers from all over the world. That coexistence of development and conservation, of city and forest, sums up well the place Santarém holds in the contemporary Amazon.