Paraty has been part, since October 31, 2017, of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN), as a city of gastronomy.

Created in 2004, the Network aims to strengthen cooperation between cities that recognize creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable development in the economic, social, cultural and environmental spheres.

 

By integrating the Network, cities are committed to sharing good practices and developing partnerships that promote creativity, strengthening the integration of culture in urban development plans.

 

Today there are 246 cities in more than 90 countries - 10 in Brazil: Salvador, in music; Curitiba, Brasília and Fortaleza, in design; Santos, in the cinema; João Pessoa, in arts and crafts; and Florianópolis, Belém, Paraty and Belo Horizonte, in gastronomy.

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Paraty became part of the chain in the area of ​​gastronomy, both for its importance in the city's culture and history and for its consistent and continued development over the last 15 years.

Just mention a product - cachaça, with its more than 150 stills in the period of greatest prosperity of the city in the 19th century - and a recipe - the bean flour, food of the tropeiros that traveled the Caminho do Ouro, and even today the most delicacy the traditional lunch of the Festa do Divino, a National Cultural Heritage - to highlight the importance of gastronomy in Paraty, the result of a centuries-old combination of indigenous, Portuguese and African influences.

Old recipes using local ingredients being rescued and reinvented by chefs and restaurants as an additional attraction for the city that is a reference in cultural tourism;

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the Folia Gastronômica and the Gastronomic Festival of Paraty, giving this movement visibility and national projection;

 

innumerable traditional celebrations, such as the Feast of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios, patron saint of Paraty; in addition to community events inserting gastronomy together with family farming, handicrafts, literature and music, in transversal actions to study, safeguard and promote our territory and cultural complex;

 

the exchange between local producers, means of production, trade and the incentive to sustainable consumption, fostering creative economy actions; the Escola de Comer, a school lunch qualification program covering 6,000 students in the municipality, extending it to the public sphere;

 

encouraging the use of local ingredients, stimulating rural, organic and agroecological production; the requalification of the cachaça of Paraty, leading it to obtain the seal of Geographical Indication of Origin and numerous awards to its brands.

 

In all the links of its productive chain, gastronomy in Paraty has been showing creativity and acting with dynamism in order to gain even more momentum with its integration with the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.