Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Built out of British iron, Italian marble, Latvian pine, Portuguese tiles and Belgian
stained glass, these mansions were soon abandoned as the city centre took on the brash
and commercial character of its present-day form. The Praça da República itself - once
home to a bullring - has a green area with a small lake where turtles sunbathe and rows
of fortune tellers throw shells and cards to part the gullible from their
reaís
.
Teatro Municipal
Praça Ramos de Azevedo • Free •
T
11 5511 3397,
W
www.teatromunicipal.sp.gov.br •
M
Anhangabaú
Three blocks east of Praça da República, in the direction of Praça da Sé, the
Te a t ro
Municipal
is São Paulo's most distinguished public building, an eclectic mixture of Art
Nouveau and Italian Renaissance styles. Work began on it in 1903, when the coffee
boom was at its peak and São Paulo at its most confident. The theatre is still the city's
main venue for classical music, and the auditorium, lavishly decorated and furnished
with Italian marble, velvet, gold leaf and mirrors, can be viewed by attending a
performance. Free guided tours are usually available, although these were suspended
owing to reconstruction work at our last check.
Outside, just down the steps leading into the Vale do Anhangabaú (see p.491),
a dramatic
sculpture fountain
represents the characters from Carlos Gomes' opera
O Guarani
, based on the topic by José de Alencar. (he opera, a story set among the
Guaraní, premiered at La Scala in 1870 and was one of the first works by a New
World composer to achieve success in Europe.)
8
Avenida São Luís
Edifício Itália: Av Ipiranga 344 • Terraço Panoràmico Mon-Fri 3-4pm • Free •
T
11 2189 2929,
M
República
In the 1940s and 1950s,
Avenida São Luís
, the street leading south from the Praça da
República, was São Paulo's version of New York's Fifth Avenue, lined with high-class
apartment buildings and o
ces; though no longer fashionable today, it still retains a
certain degree of elegance. Among the buildings lining it, the 46-storey
Edifício Itália
,
built in 1965 to dwarf the Edifício Martinelli, was for many years Latin America's
tallest building. On cloud- and smog-free days, the
Terraço Itália
restaurant on the
41st and 42nd floors is a good vantage point from which to view the city, but unless
you want to eat there, viewing is limited to one hour on weekdays only.
Edifício Copan
Avenida Ipiranga 200 • Free •
W
www.copansp.com.br •
M
República
Admirers of the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer will immediately recognize the
serpentine curves of the 1950
Edifício Copan
, just to the west of Avenida São Luís,
and by far the largest of the apartment and of
ce buildings on the avenue. It's regarded
as something of a social experiment in this otherwise sharply divided city, with its
residents paying a wide variety of prices for the 1160 apartments that range in size
from 26 to 350 square metres.
Bela Vista (Bixiga)
Since the early twentieth century, the
bairro
off
Bela Vista
, lying just southwest of
downtown, has been known as “Little Italy” (it's also commonly called Bixiga).
Calabrian stonemasons built their own modest houses here with leftover materials from
the building sites where they worked, and the neighbourhood's narrow streets are still
lined with these homes today. Italian
restaurants
exist throughout the city, but the
greatest concentration (if not the greatest quality) can be found in Bixiga. This normally
quiet neighbourhood springs to life in the evening when people throng to the central
Rua 13 de Maio, and to the streets running off it, which are lined with
cantinas
,