Originally the town was a large village of the Tupinambá tribe. The first Europeans to see it were the French, in 1612, who intended to make it a French colony. They made a fort named São Luís ("Saint Louis"), after Saint Louis IX of France as a compliment to King Louis XIII. It was conquered for Portugal by Jerônimo de Albuquerque in 1615, leaving little time for the French to build a city. This has led to some controversy to the actual founding of the city by the French or the Portuguese. In 1641 the city was invaded by the Dutch. They stayed until 1645 and did not manage to influence the city's archtecture or to leave any sign of their invasion, mainly because they did not build, and f0cused instead on violent domination. São Luís has one of the largest and best preserved heritages of colonial Portuguese architecture.
The island is known as the "Island of Love" and "Brazilian Athens", due to its many poets and writers, such as Aluísio Azevedo, Graça Aranha, Gonçalves Dias (the most famous), Ferreira Gullar, among others.
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