Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the national sport. Although the museum is lodged in the same building that hosts
Corinthians, it is careful to be completely neutral when it comes to attention paid to
particular teams. While it helps to arrive with at least a mild interest in football, the
museum is not merely there to pay simple homage to the sport - although there are
plenty of relics, including a football kicked by
Pelé
as a child, on display. Instead, the
focus of the museum is the history of twentieth-century Brazil, using football as a
vehicle to explore this. Displays ranging from traditional
memorabilia
to high-tech
interactive exhibits
examine issues including the changing face of race in Brazilian
football, how dictators co-opted the sport and how football affected a diverse range of
writers and artists, including Cândido Portinari, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Jorge Amado.
There's a great entertainment area where visitors can test their skills against a (virtual)
star goalkeeper, and an excellent shop selling a range of football-related souvenirs.
Avenida Paulista and around
By 1900, the coffee barons had moved on from Higienópolis to flaunt their wealth
through new mansions set in spacious gardens stretching along the 3km-long
Avenida
Paulista
- then a tree-lined avenue set along a ridge 3km southwest of the city centre
(look out for old photos - sold as postcards - showing the startlingly different avenue a
century ago.) In the late 1960s, and throughout the 1970s, Avenida Paulista resembled a
giant construction site, with banks and other companies competing to erect ever-taller
buildings. There was little time for creativity, and along the entire length of the avenue it
would be di
cult to single out more than one example of decent modern architecture.
There are, however, a handful of Art Nouveau and Art Deco mansions along Avenida
Paulista, afforded o
cial protection from the developers' bulldozers. Some lie empty, the
subjects of legal wrangles over inheritance rights, while others act as prestigious
headquarters for banks.
8
Casa das Rosas
Av Paulista 37 • Tues-Sat 10am-10pm, Sun 10am-6pm • Free •
T
11 3285 6986,
W
casadasrosas.org.br •
M
Brigadeiro
One mansion well worth visiting is the French-style
Casa das Rosas
, near Brigadeiro
mêtro
station at the eastern end of the
avenida
. Constructed in 1935 as a private
residence, the building is set in a rose garden and has a beautiful Art Nouveau
stained-glass window, making for a stunning contrast with the mirrored-glass-and-steel
o
ce building behind it. The state of São Paulo owns the Casa das Rosas, which is now
a cultural centre where poetry-related exhibitions are often held.
Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP)
Av Paulista 1578 • Tues-Sun 10am-6pm, Thurs 10am-8pm • R$15; free Tues •
T
11 3251 5644,
W
masp.art.br •
M
Trianon-Masp
One of the few interesting modern buildings along Avenida Paulista is the
Museu
de Arte de São Paulo
. Designed in 1957 by the Italian-born, naturalized-Brazilian
architect Lina Bo Bardi and opened in 1968, the monumental concrete structure
appears to float above the ground, supported only by remarkably delicate pillars.
MASP is the pride of São Paulo's art lovers, and is considered to have the most
important collection of Western art in Latin America, featuring the work of great
European artists from the last five hundred years on its top floor. For most North
American and European visitors, notable though some of the individual works of
Bosch, Rembrandt and Degas may be, the highlights of the collection are often the
seventeenth- to nineteenth-century landscapes of Brazil by European artists - none
more important than the small but detailed paintings by Frans Post, a painter of the
Dutch Baroque school whose rich Brazil-inspired works were used as tapestry designs
by the French Gobelins factory, some of which are also displayed in the museum. The
museum's very reasonably priced lunchtime restaurant makes for an excellent escape
from the crowds, exhaust fumes and heat of Avenida Paulista outside.
