Brazil Hotels

In 1554, the Jesuit priests Jose de Anchieta and Manuel da Nobrega established a mission station on the banks of the Rio Tiete in an attempt to bring Christianity to the Tupi-Guarani Indians. Called Sao Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga, it was 70km inland and 730m up, in the sheer, forest-covered inclines of the Serra do Mar, above the port of Sao Vicente. The gently undulating plateau and the proximity to the Parana and Plata rivers facilitated traffic into the interior and, with Sao Paulo as their base, roaming gangs of bandeirantes set out in search of loot. Around the mission school, a few adobe huts were erected and the settlement soon developed into a trading post and a base from which to secure mineral wealth. In 1681, Sao Paulo - as the town became known - became a seat of regional government and, in 1711, it was made a municipality by the king of Portugal, the cool, healthy climate helping to attract settlers from the coast.

With the expansion of coffee plantations westwards from Rio de Janeiro, along the Paraiba Valley, in the mid-nineteenth century, Sao Paulo's fortunes looked up. The region's rich soil - terra roxa - was ideally suited to coffee cultivation, and from about 1870 plantation owners took up residence in the city, which was undergoing a rapid transformation into a bustling regional centre. British, French and German merchants and hoteliers opened local operations, British-owned rail lines radiated in all directions from Sao Paulo, and foreign water, gas, telephone and electricity companies moved in to service the city. In the 1890s, enterprising "coffee barons" began to place some of their profits into local industry, hedging their bets against a possible fall in the price of coffee, with textile factories being a favourite area for investment.

As the local population could not meet the ever-increasing demands of plantation owners, factories looked to immigrants to meet their labour requirements. As a result, Sao Paulo's population soared, almost tripling to 69,000 by 1890 and, by the end of the next decade, increasing to 239,000. By 1950 it had reached 2.2 million and Sao Paulo had clearly established its dominant role in Brazil's urbanization: today the city's population stands at around ten million, rising to at least sixteen million when the sprawling metropolitan area is included.

As industry, trade and population developed at such a terrific pace, buildings were erected with little time to consider their aesthetics; in any case, they often became cramped as soon as they were built, or had to be demolished to make way for a new avenue. However, some grand public buildings were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a few still remain, though none is as splendid as those found in Buenos Aires, a city that developed at much the same time. Even now, conservation is seen as not being profitable, and Sao Paulo is more concerned with rising population, rising production and rising consumption - factors that today are paralleled by rising levels of homelessness, pollution and violence.

Residents of the city, Paulistanos, talk smugly of their work ethic, supposedly superior to that which dominates the rest of Brazil, and speak contemptuously of the idleness of cariocas (in reply, cariocas joke sourly that Paulistanos are simply incapable of enjoying anything, sex in particular). But work and profit aside, Sao Paulo does have its attractions: the city lays claim to have long surpassed Rio as Brazil's cultural centre, and is home to a lively music and arts world. The city's food , too, is often excellent, thanks to immigrants from so many parts of the world.

For visitors and locals alike, the fact that Sao Paulo's history extends back for over four centuries, well beyond the late nineteenth-century coffee boom, usually goes completely unnoticed. Catapulted virtually overnight from being a sleepy, provincial market town into one of the western hemisphere's great cities, there are few places in the world that have as comprehensively turned their backs on the past as Sao Paulo has done. In the nineteenth century, most of colonial Sao Paulo was levelled and replaced by a disorganized patchwork of wide avenues and large buildings, the process repeating itself ever since; today, not only has the city's colonial architectual heritage all but vanished, but there's little physical evidence of the coffee boom decades either.

Nevertheless, a few relics have, somehow, escaped demolition and offer hints of Sao Paulo's bygone eras. What remains is hidden away discreetly in corners, scattered throughout the city, often difficult to find but all the more thrilling when you do. There is no shortage of museums , but with a few significant exceptions they are disappointing for a city of Sao Paulo's stature. Collections have frequently been allowed to deteriorate and exhibits are generally poorly displayed. Fortunately, museum charges are negligible, around $1, and are only given in the text below where they are above this figure.

There are several sights associated with the vast influx of immigrants to the city, and it's worth visiting some of the individual bairros, detailed in the text, where the immigrants and their descendants have established communities: the food, as you'd expect, is just one reason to do this.

Anhembi Turismo, the city's tourism department (tel 011/6971-5511), maintains several information booths scattered about the city which are especially helpful for general directions, or for local bus and metro details. Booths can be found along Avenida Sao Luis, on Praca da Republica (across from Rua Sete de Abril; daily 9am-6pm); at Praca da Liberdade (daily 9am-6pm); at the Teatro Municipal (Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, Sat 9am-1pm); and at the Morumbi (Mon-Fri 9am-6pm) and Iguatemi (Mon-Fri 9am-6pm) shopping centres. A good map, and information on the state of Sao Paulo, is available from the state tourist office at Avenida Sao Luis 97 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm).

For up-to-date listings of what's going on in the city, the Sao Paulo edition of the weekly magazine Veja contains an excellent entertainment guide, and the daily newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo lists cultural and sporting events and, on Friday, contains a useful entertainment guide. The Web site www.guiasp.com.br is a good source of information on Sao Paulo's restaurants, bars, cinemas, theatres and nightclubs. For basic information about current exhibitions in museums and galleries, theatre, concert and cinema programmes, check out the Guia Internet Sao Paulo ( www.guiasp.com.br).

For people with little time available, there is an excellent and inexpensive tour run by the city authorities. An air-conditioned bus with a bilingual guide departs hourly from Barra Funda metro station's Terminal Turistico (Tues-Sun from 9.30am, last departure at 4.30pm), and visits the Memorial da America Latina, Pinacoteca do Estado, Museu de Arte Sacra, Memorial do Imigrante (Sundays only), the Museu de arte de Sao Paulo and the Museu de Arte Moderna - before returning to Barra Funda. The tour is just $1 and the ticket entitles you to half-price admission to the museums. You can get off the bus at any of the sights and rejoin the tour on a following bus.