Without a doubt one of the most important cities in Brazil is São Paulo, or Sao Paulo, How do you say in Portuguese. It is, in fact, the city with the largest number of inhabitants in the country and also one of the most populated on the continent and in the world.
it's a city with history, with art, gastronomy and music Let's get to know this beautiful Brazilian city today.
Sao Paulo
The town that gave rise to the current city it was founded in 1554 by the hand of the Jesuits who managed to convert the Indians into Christians. The first settlers had to deal with some hostile Indians, but between the conversion of some and the annihilation of others, the town finally established itself.
During the first two hundred years it was a remote, isolated town with a subsistence economy. In fact, it was the only inland town in Brazil until the Portuguese colony expanded through outposts and, finally, already entered the seventeenth century, Sao Paulo became the head of the captaincy, poor but head at last. And many pioneers left here to hunt Indians and conquer more land.
The truth is that the then paulistas They were poor, so the solution to their economic problems was to capture Indians to turn them into slaves (since they could not buy Africans), and to conquer new lands. In one of these outposts, gold was discovered in the Minas Gerais area and thus, At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, the town officially became a city.
Finally, after the exploitation of gold began that of sugar cane. Later, in the time of Pedro 1, Brazil was an "imperial city", it grew in number of inhabitants, then began to produce coffee, to be connected by road and rail with the coast and the rest of the country and then, little by little, It became the huge city that it is today.
Sao Paulo and art
Sao Paulo is synonymous with art and culture. It has very good museums and art centers. For example, there is the MASP (Sao Paulo Museum of Art), which is the museum of western art most important in Latin America.
This museum opened in 1947 and it has a lot of art, including paintings and sculptures, from World War II onwards. The building was designed by Lina Do Bardi and is a building built on four pillars that raise the first floor to eight meters high, leaving a space of 74 meters between all the supports.
You will see in its halls more than 10 thousand pieces that come from all over the world: sculptures, clothing, utensils, photos, drawings, sculptures and works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso or Raphael, just to give you some examples.
There are also small collections dedicated to the Ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman culture, but the pre-Columbian art, African art and even Asian art. And obviously, there are also Brazilian artists. The MASP is on Avenida Paulista 1578.
There is also the Museum of Modern Art of Sao Paulo or MAM. You can find it in Parque do Ibarapuera and it dates from 1948. It is one of the first cultural institutions in Brazil and one of the most important centers in terms of modern art refers. The idea of the founding couple was to promote a taste for art among the public.
What does the MAM contain? There is a wide and interesting collection of fabrics from Marc Chagall or Joan Miró, for example, also things of Picasso and Aldo Bonadei, for example, Francis Picabia, Jean Arp or Alexander Calder. The museum is on Avenida Pedro Álvares Cabral.
El Museum of the Portuguese Language provides a good interactive experience. It works in an elegant old building that used to be a railway station, in Bairro da Luz. Language is the basis of Brazilian culture, so it is a very pleasant place with a lot of history. Of course you must know or understand Portuguese.
And finally, we have the Sao Paulo Biennial which dates from 1951 and is a large collection of international modern art that is held every two years in the Cecilio Matarazzo Pavilion, inside Parque do Ibirapuera. It is one of the most important art exhibitions in the city, the country and Latin America. It is free to enter, so if you visit San Pablo just when it is being celebrated, don't miss it!
I don't want to say goodbye to the art of Sao Paulo without mentioning the Beco do Batman or Batman Alley, located near Rua Goncalo Alfonso. It is a colorful open-air museum with the signature of many street artists, the most important in the city, who take care of renewing their paintings on a regular basis. And, I do not want to leave it in the dark, there is also the Football Museum.
Sao Paulo and gastronomy
The city has great ethnic diversity so you can eat everything and everything will surprise you. Let us remember that São Paulo is the seat of the largest Japanese community in America, So Japanese gastronomy says that it is present in its most traditional form but also as a fusion with the other ethnic groups that coexist in the city, such as the Italian or the Arab.
Starting precisely with the Asian community, it is best to take a walk through the Japanese Quarter same, also called Eastern Quarter. And it is that in addition to Japanese there are Chinese and other Asian cuisines so it is a super interesting place.
Among the foods that are popular here we can name the Roasted ham, traditional good of the city: a pork dish cooked for hours that is usually accompanied with potatoes and roasted yucas. there is also the paulista tack, with rice, plantains, meat, cabbage, egg and beans, the cuzcoz alla paulista, with Arabic roots, the Shrimp bean ball, a short dough with peas and stuffed with shrimp and obviously, the feijoada which is eaten here with various types of meat, rice and red beans.
Of course, if you like markets, be sure to visit the Municipal Market.
Sao Paulo and music
It must be said that in the city of São Paulo one of the most important music conventions in Latin America is held. This is the SIM Sau Paulo and it takes place over five days for professionals from all sectors of the music industry to meet: producers, artists, journalists and anyone who enjoys music from both the country and the world.
In its streets there are also theaters, bars and different shows. Everything in the center comes alive after sunset and the city is known as a great place to have fun and get out of jarana. Obviously, due to its size, musical events take place all the time and there are many international concerts that come here, but none of them is necessary for the city to vibrate with its own sounds.
And although the carnival of Rio de Janeiro is internationally more popular, the Sao Paulo Carnival it's great too.