The Capital

Founded in 1554 by the Jesuit priests, São Paulo, by those days a small town, remained peaceful until the middle of the 19th century when it started to expand as a result of coffee-growing. From then on, opportunities began to spring up everywhere and the capital of the state of São Paulo has never stopped growing. Immigrants came from all over the world to solve the labour problem and nowadays it is estimated to be the third largest Italian city in the world, the largest Japanese city outside Japan, the third largest Lebanese city outside Lebanon, the largest Portuguese city outside Portugal and the largest Spanish city outside Spain.

In São Paulo, the mixing of races and ethnic groups has increased with the passing of time and has had a profound effect on the city's cultural and economic life. As a nucleus within the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo which consists of 39 municipalities, the capital is the main economic centre and the largest urban concentration in Brazil. Like all metropolises, it is facing problems that have arisen from the population density, such as pollution and heavy traffic, but it is also going through a process of economic deconcentration with the restructuring of urban services, for example, the tripling of the underground rail system by the year 2004, an indication that the quality of life offered could soon be improving.

With an economic infrastructure that was established during the last century and a half, the city has an integrated industry, a network of services linked to the main world centres and extensive resources for information, leisure and culture. There has been a trend to consolidate its vocation as a large and modern metropolis bent towards the provision of services that rely on leading edge technology.

The intense cultural life of São Paulo received a major boost during the 1920s when it hosted the Modern Art Week, the landmark for a movement to encourage renewal within Brazilian art. Nowadays, that dynamism is expressed in the capital's well-appointed museums, the range of options offered and a certain guarantee for artists that to achieve success in São Paulo signifies general acclaim. The city also offers considerable opportunity for leisure and one of its main assets is perhaps its range of restaurants, as varied as the origins of the paulistas themselves.

Museums

São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP)

The MASP was created by the journalist Assis Chateaubriand, and its final home, designed by the architect Lina Bo Bardi, was inaugurated in 1968. Bo Bardi's design was in the "brutalist" style in which the materials used were not to be masked in any way; it complied with the legal requirements of retaining the appearance of the belvedere where it was built. The building is suspended by two enormous porticoes, bearing a 9,200 ton load and resulting in an open span of 74 metres. The Museum houses one of Brazil's richest art collections which was assembled thanks to the dedication of Assis Chateaubriand and Pietro Maria Bardi, director of the Museum for many years. It is considered to be the most important european art collection in Latin America and contains works by great masters such as Degas, Renoir, Modigliani and Bonnard, amongst others.

Pinacoteca do Estado

The building occupied by the Pinacoteca was designed by Ramos de Azevedo in 1897 to house the School of Arts and Trades, an institution that trained technicians and craftsmen in the building of towns that had become rich as a result of coffee. With its bare brick walls and broad windows incorporated into the urban setting, the Pinacoteca underwent major changes and nowadays with its restored halls, covered inner courtyards, restored roof and specially designed lighting, it houses major exhibitions, featuring works by Rodin and Miró, for example.

The Museum's profile runs specifically from 19th century Brazilian art to the present time and the exhibitions shown there enable art forms to be reassessed in the light of themes that are evocative of Brazil. The collection consists of 4,000 pieces and is of special significance for São Paulo because it brings together works by paulista artists such as Almeida Jr., Pedro Alexandrino and Oscar Pereira da Silva as well as representative works by Cândido Portinari, Anita Malfatti, Victor Brecheret, Tarsila do Amaral and Di Cavalcanti.

The Museums of Modern Art and of Contemporary Art (MAM and MAC)

The MAM, founded in 1948, the MAC founded in 1963 and the São Paulo International Biennial are closely bound up with each other, with Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho, founder of the three institutions being the central linking figure. From 1951, the MAM took the initiative in running the Biennial and included in its regulations the requirement that all the prizes awarded should take the form of acquisition for the Museum's collection. As a consequence of this, the young museum formed an artistic heritage that was truly representative of contemporary art.

At a general meeting in 1963, the MAM decided to transfer its collection to the University of São Paulo. Together with two other major collections - those of Ciccillo Matarazzo and Yolanda Penteado - it forms the embryo of the Museum of Contemporary Art - University of São Paulo (MAC-USP), considered to be one of the most important contemporary art collections in Latin America. In that same year, the MAM closed, emerging later in a different form, and the São Paulo Biennial came into being as a Foundation, no longer holding any commitment with regard to the donation of works but continuing to promote major biennial exhibitions, featuring both Brazilian and international contemporary art.

With a collection of more than 5,000 works, including oils, drawings, engravings, sculpture, paintings, ceramics and tapestry, the MAC is the largest museum in Latin America specializing in 20th century western work. In addition to marking out the main guidelines of the plastic language of the 20th century, the museum organizes regular exhibitions and offers optative training for graduate and external courses, both broad-based and specialized, including practical work and guided tours.

The Museum of São Paulo (Museu Paulista)

The first monument built specially to preserve the memory of Brazilian Independence, the Museum of São Paulo which opened on September 7th, 1895, was created as a Natural Science Museum in the mould of European museums of that time, when the study and exhibiting of zoology and botany were the main themes. After 1917, under the directorship of the historian Affonso D'Escragnolle Taunay, the Museum resumed its original vocation and is nowadays a museum of history that is concerned with the study of material culture. Its collection, consisting of around 100,000 exhibits, comprises works of art, furniture, costumes and objects belonging to figures from Brazilian history including pioneers (bandeirantes) and emperors. The facilities house a library containing 100,000 volumes and a Historical Documentation Centre housing 40.000 manuscripts.

Modern Art Week

In February 1922, the São Paulo Municipal Theatre was taken over by a movement of artistic renewal that took the whole city by storm: Modern Art Week had a profound effect on the directions of Brazilian literature, sculpture, painting and music. The search for a national identity and the concept of artistic modernization were evident amongst the artists and intellectuals who organized and took part in the movement, including some of the best-known names in 20th century Brazilian art, such as Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Menotti del Picchia, Guilherme de Almeida, Sergio Milliet, Victor Brecheret, Anita Malfatti, Di Cavalcanti, Villa-Lobos and Guiomar Novaes. The importance of the Week can be summed up in the statement that it has engendered within Brazilian culture, a general sense of modernity that has contributed to the neutralizing the Brazil's chronic imitation complex of provincial Brazil.

Eating in São Paulo

Being mainly industrial and nowadays Brazil's first city and economic leader, São Paulo was coloured in the early stages of its development by the immigration of a wide variety of different ethnic races. There is striking evidence of this multi-culturalism in the city with its lively and contemporary excitement. The various districts where a specific culture predominates offer us the opportunity to live side by side with the most varied habits and customs. But it is in gastronomy, for the delight and feasting of those who seek it out, that the city holds its great fascination.

The street markets become a carnival with their abundance of colourful produce and mysterious aromas. They are a clear indication of the important role played by the people of São Paulo in gastronomic culture. The various districts of the city offer the most varied and typical restaurants; the cuisine represented there ranges from the most traditional to the most exotic, from the most sophisticated to the most simple; dishes from the Mediterranean, Western and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Asia, the Americas and from all over Brazil and food of all kinds - standard, vegetarian, fish and also seafood.

São Paulo represents the largest concentration of Japanese people outside Japan, resulting in an enormous choice of places to eat different types of Japanese food (there are more than one hundred restaurants). Proximity to the coast, the quantity and quality of fish and seafood on which Japanese cuisine is based, are the ingredients of its acknowledged excellence. The grill restaurants with their barbecued meat, varieties of salad and typical accompaniments offer a unique opportunity to try the different cuts of meat. An experience not to be missed.

Lastly, one of the most interesting and enjoyable gastronomic phenomena: pizza. It has been said even by Italians from Naples and Americans from Chicago - the pizza's hallowed centres of excellence - that São Paulo produces the most varied and delicious pizzas in the world. On Sunday evenings, the people of São Paulo meet to share the magic of this doughy disc and its various toppings. The city's pizzerias, with their relaxed and unusual atmosphere, their wood-burning ovens and the cooks juggling the pizza bases, are a show on their own. The eager and animated conversation about football and the aroma of the various seasonings used are a sign of the importance attached to this civilized and enjoyable custom of sitting around a table in São Paulo.