Brazil - The Rough Guide to South America on a Budget - page 330

somehow manages its underdog status
well, and its friendly population simply
gets on with making money - and
spending it. If you're someone who gets a
thrill out of buzzing cosmopolitan streets
and discovering the hottest bar, club or
restaurant, then you'll love São Paulo - a
city of both pure grit and sophisticated
savoir-faire.

Colégio , a replica of the chapel and
college founded in 1554 by the Jesuit
mission. Next door the run-of-the-mill
collection of relics at the Museu Padre
Anchieta (Tues-Sun 9am-4.30pm, R$6)
is best bypassed in favour of its lovely
patio café. Around the corner is São
Paulo's sole remaining eighteenth-century
manor house, the Solar da Marquesa de
Santos (Rua Roberto Simonsen 136;
Tues-Sun 9am-5pm; free), with a few
displays telling the story of the city. Of
the three colonial-era churches near Sé,
the seventeenth-century Igreja de São
Francisco (daily 7.30am-7pm), two
blocks west on Praça da Patriarca, is
probably the best preserved and features
an elaborate high altar.
Heading northeast towards São Bento
you'll meet the high-rises of the Triângulo ,
São Paulo's traditional banking district.
he Edifício Martinelli (Av São João 35)
was the city's first skyscraper at thirty
storeys, although the views are best from
atop the 36-floor Edifício Banespa (Rua
João Brícola 24; Mon-Fri 10am-5pm;
free; ID required), which was modelled
after New York's Empire State Building.
A block away, the Mosteiro São Bento
(Mon-Fri 6am-6pm, Sat-Sun 6am-
noon & 4-6pm) has a church dating
from 1598, though the impressive
complex has been renovated multiple
times, and is still home to a community
of Benedictine monks who sing
Gregorian chants early on Sundays. Take
in busy market street Rua 25 de Março
before moving on to Rua da Cantareira,
where you'll find the city's Mercado
Municipal (daily 7am-5pm), completed
in 1933 and featuring stained-glass
windows with rural plantation scenes.
Countless food stalls sell exotic fruits plus
trademark thick-wedge mortadella (ham)
sandwiches and pasteis . Upstairs are some
terrific bars and restaurants - a mob
scene at weekends.

WHAT TO SEE AND DO
São Paulo is vast, but the central
neighbourhoods and Metrô lines are
fairly easy to get a handle on. The focal
points downtown are the large squares of
Praça da Sé and faded Praça da República ,
separated by the wide stretch of Vale do
Anhangabaú . Just north of Praca da Sé is
the seventeenth-century monastery of
São Bento , and beyond lively shopping
streets lead to the unmissable Mercado
Municipal and the much cleaned-up
red-light district of Luz . Bixiga (also called
Bela Vista) and Liberdade , to the south,
are home to a sizeable chunk of São
Paulo's Italian and Japanese immigrants
respectively. Rua Augusta is a key yet
permanently down-at-heel nightlife
district, leading southwards onto
imposing commercial artery Avenida
Paulista , with its sprawling upscale
suburb gardens descending the hill on the
far side. Heading back uphill west of here
is Vila Madalena, another fashionable
district with numerous bars and an
artistic feel. Superb museums are
scattered right across the city, including
the palatial Museu Paulista , Museu do
Futebol , Museu Afro-Brasil , MASP art
gallery , and the Niemeyer-designed
complex Memorial América Latina . A new
state-of-the-art stadium, the Arena de São
Paulo at Itaquera in the east of the city,
will host the opening match and one
semifinal of the 2014 World Cup.

3

Around Praça da Sé
The heart of the old part of São Paulo is
Praça da Sé , a busy, palm-tree-lined
square dominated by the large but
unremarkable neo-Gothic Catedral
Metropolitana , completed in 1954. On
the opposite side of the square, along Rua
Boa Vista, is the whitewashed Pátio do

Luz
From the Mercado Municipal it's five
blocks' walk northwest to Luz , a red-light
district now in the midst of a huge
government renovation project. Close to
the metrô at the head of Avenida Cásper