São Paulo

Avenida Paulista is São Paulo's beating heart — a 2.8-kilometre avenue of skyscrapers, banks, cultural centres and crowds that captures the city's energy. Its landmark is MASP, the São Paulo Museum of Art, an architectural icon by Lina Bo Bardi suspended above the street on great red concrete beams, whose collection of European and Brazilian art (displayed on famous glass easels) is the most important in the southern hemisphere. The avenue is lined with free or low-cost cultural centres — Itaú Cultural, Japan House, the Instituto Moreira Salles — and on Sundays it closes to cars and fills with cyclists, families, musicians and street performers, the best time to walk it. Elsewhere, the Pinacoteca in the regenerated Luz district is one of Brazil's finest art museums, and the city's museum scene — from the Football Museum to the Museum of the Portuguese Language — is the richest in the country.

For green relief from the concrete, Ibirapuera Park is São Paulo's answer to Central Park — a large, leafy expanse of lakes, jogging paths and lawns laid out in the 1950s, dotted with the sinuous white modernist pavilions of Oscar Niemeyer that house the Museum of Modern Art (MAM), the Afro Brasil Museum and the Biennial pavilion. It's where Paulistanos relax, exercise and picnic at weekends. North of it lies the gritty but fascinating historic centre (Centro), the city's birthplace: the neo-Gothic Sé Cathedral and its plaza, the opulent Theatro Municipal opera house, the bustling pedestrian shopping streets, and the modernist landmarks of the curving Edifício Copan (the largest residential building in Latin America) and the historic Martinelli skyscraper, with rooftop views over the endless skyline. The centre rewards a guided or daytime visit and reveals the layers beneath the modern megacity.

São Paulo eats better than anywhere in Brazil, and food is reason enough to visit. The city is home to the largest Japanese community outside Japan, centred on the lantern-strung Liberdade district with its ramen, sushi and Asian groceries; to huge Italian (Bixiga/Bela Vista, Mooca), Lebanese, Portuguese and northeastern-Brazilian communities, each with their own neighbourhoods and cooking; and to a fearless fine-dining scene that puts several Paulistano restaurants among the best in Latin America. Start at the Mercadão (Mercado Municipal), the grand covered market, for its legendary towering mortadella sandwich and a fried codfish pastel; graze the bakeries (padarias) and corner bars (botecos) for coxinha, pão de queijo and an icy chopp beer; and dive into the immigrant neighbourhoods for the real depth. From street food to tasting menus, São Paulo is Brazil's gastronomic capital, and eating your way across it is the most rewarding thing to do here.

São Paulo's creative and nocturnal energy is legendary. The hilly Vila Madalena district is the bohemian heart — galleries, design shops, lively bars and the famous Beco do Batman (“Batman Alley”), a lane covered in constantly changing, world-class street art that has made São Paulo a global graffiti capital. The city's nightlife is among the best in the Americas, running from the bars of Vila Madalena and Pinheiros to the clubs and live-music venues of Augusta and Barra Funda, often until dawn — Paulistanos take their going-out seriously. Beyond, hip neighbourhoods each have their character: leafy Jardins for upscale shopping and dining, regenerating Centro for culture, Higienópolis for its modernist architecture. The sheer scale of the city — best grasped from a rooftop bar or the Farol Santander observation deck — is part of the experience, a horizon of towers in every direction. São Paulo is a city to be lived rather than ticked off, and its restless creativity is its greatest attraction.