Attractions in Sao Paulo

Sao Paulo overwhelms the senses with its sheer size. With over 10 million inhabitants, it is the world's third largest city and the largest in South America. Sao Paulo and its rival Brazilian city, Rio de Janeiro, have often been compared to New York and Los Angeles respectively. If Rio has gained fame for its striking natural setting, Sao Paulo's attraction lies in its people and its vibrant cultures. The Avenida Paulista's canyon of upthrusting skyscrapers only hints at the city's sources of energy. A more cosmopolitan city than its counterpart, Sao Paulo possesses significant ethnic minority communities, including substantial Japanese, Italian, and Arab and Lebanese Christian neighborhoods.

Ibirapuera Park
Blessed with over 2 million square meters of green space, São Paulo's version of Central Park offers quite a bit to see and do. You can wander the paths beside pleasant lagoons or rent a bicycle and cycle the pathways. Every Sunday morning there's a free outdoor concert in the park's Praça da Paz. Sunday from 10am to 4pm you can take advantage of the Bosque de Leitura, a kind of free outdoor lending library that lets you borrow magazines or books (including many in English) to read in the park for the duration of day. In the corner near Gate 3 there's the Museu de Arte Moderna (Museum of Modern Art; see listing, below). Just nearby there's the excellent Museu Afro Brasil and the OCA Auditorium, a flying saucer-shaped building that often hosts traveling art exhibits.

Monument to Latin America
Shy of a visit to Brasilia, this is the best place to see Brazilian modernism in all its concrete austerity. Designed by famed Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the monument consists of a vast field of concrete dotted about the edges with perfectly geometrical concrete pavilions originally painted blinding white, but long-since streaked by the rain. The two pavilions of most interest to visitors unimpressed by architecture are the Art Gallery and the Hall of Creativity. The Art Gallery hosts changing fine-art exhibits, while the Hall of Creativity is a permanent home to a fun and fascinating display of folk art from across the length and breadth of Latin America. Back outside, in the center of all this hard-edged mathematical purity stands a giant concrete hand, its palm incised with a blood-red map of Latin America.

Museu Afro Brazil
Brazil has the largest black population outside of Africa, so it's curious that only in the past decade or so has black or Afro consciousness really begun to take root. This new museum -- one of the most popular cultural institutions to open in São Paulo in recent years -- is dedicated to showing the cultural achievements of Africans and their descendants enslaved in Brazil. If you think you might be letting yourself in for a hectoring guilt-inducing lecture, think again. The museum is not a cri de coeur over the injustice and hardship of slavery but rather a celebration of the art and accomplishments of the African diaspora. Displays show short biographies of writers or painters or politicians who were black, including lots of their artwork and artifacts. Displays are gorgeous -- particularly the art and photography -- and the museum has wonderful natural light. Allow an hour.

Museu Arte Brasileira/FAAP
Don't let the name fool you. What this majestic and slightly pompous building (think Mussolini monumental) in quiet Higienópolis plays host to is not Brazilian art, but an ever-changing parade of grand international exhibits. The grand hall and both wings of the museum are transformed for each new exhibit. The museum also claims to house a number of the Brazilian greats -- Portinari, Di Cavalcanti, and others -- but they're never actually on display. (You may also see the museum referred to as FAAP, which is the acronym for the cultural institute where it's located.)

Museu Arte São Paulo (MASP)
The staid old MASP is trying harder. Perhaps because of competition from the Pinocoteca, São Pãulo's big art museum recently re-organized its galleries to give much more space to Brazilian artists. The top floor contains the permanent collection which, as before, contains an excellent selection of Western art, from 14th-century Italian religious imagery to the early-20th-century works of Picasso. Every period and country has a representative sample -- Dutch Rembrandts, English Turners, Spanish El Grecos, and French everythings (Rodin, Renoir, Degas, and Monet). But in one big change, several rooms on this floor are now dedicated to the Brazilian greats, among them Di Cavalcanti and Candido Portinari. Even better, the entire second floor of the MASP is now a temporary gallery, dedicated to changing exhibitions, again of mostly Brazilian artists. The display space is still long and fluorescent lit and kind of warehouse-y, but the art is now worth the trip.