São Paulo
A city with no postcard and the best restaurants on the continent — you come for the table, not the view
- When to go
- October 20° · 18 rainy days
- Per day
- €€€price 3 of 5
- How many days
- 3days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 9 km Congonhas · 21 km Guarulhos
- Right now
São Paulo has nothing to show from a viewpoint, and that is the only honest way to start. Twenty-two million people in the metro area, the largest Japanese, Italian and Lebanese communities outside their home countries, and the consequence is that you eat better here than anywhere in South America.
The city is visited by district, and that is three separate days. Avenida Paulista is the spine: MASP with its paintings hung on glass easels in the middle of the room, Ibirapuera park with Niemeyer's buildings, and the avenue closed to traffic on Sundays, when half the city walks it. The centre holds the Municipal Market, a 1933 hall whose salt-cod sandwich is an institution, and the Copan building, Niemeyer's wave with three thousand flats in it.
The metro is the best in Brazil and that genuinely changes a plan: six lines, clean, fast, covering Paulista, the centre, Ibirapuera and Vila Madalena. The traffic above it is proverbially the worst on the continent — rush hour is measured in tens of kilometres of queue — so a taxi is for outside six to ten and four to eight.
For the restaurants on world lists you do not book a table, you book weeks or a month ahead; everywhere else, which is most of the city, you walk in without notice. Liberdade is the Japanese quarter with a Saturday and Sunday market, Bixiga is Italian, Vila Madalena has bars and the murals of Beco do Batman, and the padaria — a bakery open from six — is where you have pão na chapa and drink coffee standing up.
Guides for São Paulo
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
São Paulo in 3 days
→Three days in a city with no postcard — so the plan is built around districts, meals and which museum is shut on which…
What to see in São Paulo
MASP
A museum in a building floating on four red pillars, its paintings on glass easels in the middle of the room instead of on the wall — Lina Bo Bardi wanted visitors to walk around a picture rather than stand in front of it in 1968. Free entry on Tuesdays until 8pm, open till 9pm on Fridays with free entry from 6pm; closed on Mondays.
The Municipal Market
A 1933 hall with stained glass and a salt-cod sandwich that is half the reason people come. Go in the morning and on a weekday; at the weekend the queue upstairs is longer than the sandwich is worth.
Ibirapuera
A park designed in 1954 by Niemeyer with Burle Marx, holding four museums and a covered walkway that links them. This is what the city looks like resting.
Liberdade
The largest Japanese community outside Japan, with a Saturday and Sunday market and shops selling what is not sold anywhere else. It is as Chinese and Korean as Japanese now — which is a truer picture of the city.
Vila Madalena and Beco do Batman
A lane covered in murals since the eighties and repainted every few months. In the evening the quarter turns into bars; Friday and Saturday are crowded, Wednesday is the city.
The Pinacoteca and Luz
The city's oldest museum in a restored 1900 building, next to the Museum of the Portuguese Language in the old railway station. The quarter is fine by day and not walked after dark.
Two things you probably did not know
Sao Paulo banned advertising billboards across the whole city in 2007. Over fifteen thousand hoardings came down within months, revealing buildings nobody had seen for decades.
The state of Sao Paulo has the largest Japanese community outside Japan, around a million and a half people. The first immigrants arrived by ship in 1908 to work on the coffee plantations.
Ready for São Paulo?
Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from São Paulo — day trips or weekends.
Brazil
→A country where the flight between two cities is often cheaper, and always faster, than the overnight coach
Argentina
→A country 3,700 kilometres long, where the far south is seen in December and the whales and the snow in August
Portugal
→A country that spent centuries looking at the ocean instead of the Europe behind it
All 277 places we write about sit on one page — narrow them down by continent, country, price or what you are travelling for.
Within reach from here: Rio de Janeiro, Foz do Iguaçu and Salvador
See how much of that actually suits you — or pin São Paulo if you have been.
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