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In times gone by, Avenida Paulista was São Paulo’s most prestigious address, a boulevard lined with grand homes that showcased the wealth of Brazil’s influential coffee barons and other successful businesspeople. Stately mansions were constructed in a variety of graceful architectural styles; as the value of the land increased, however, mansions were replaced by skyscrapers, some of which were also constructed in striking styles of a newer era. Only a couple of the fabulous homes of years gone by have survived into the 21st century; thankfully, one of them, Casa das Rosas, is preserved as a reminder of the avenue’s glorious past.

: Avenida Paulista mansion

: Estação da Luz train station clock tower

Today, generations removed from the days of the coffee barons, Avenida Paulista is lined with its ever-evolving cavalcade of structures, some of which are very unusual in their architecture and have become sightseeing attractions in their own right. MASP, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, ranks among the most outstanding art museums in the world. Hovering over the void below like a science-fiction space station, the building certainly does stand out among the world’s great museums. So, too, do the collections within showcase billions of dollars’ worth of art. Among the famous European masters whose works are known throughout the world, there are Brazilian artists whose paintings are less familiar overseas. Brazilian art is hardly known beyond the country’s borders, but the evocative works of such painters as Emiliano Di Cavalcanti and Cândido Portinari are highly coveted by the citizenry and command high prices. Some of their paintings can be seen in the Pinacoteca, where works by these two of the most exalted names in Brazilian art are featured in a vast collection in central São Paulo, close to the revitalised Estação da Luz train station.

: Parque Ibirapuera Museu Afro Brasil

: MASP floats above Avenida Paulista

Not that visitors even have to leave Avenida Paulista for cultural enlightenment. The boulevard’s high-rise buildings house much more than offices and residences. The Cultura bookshop, for example, is a long-established cultural institution in the Conjunto Nacional building, where small-scale concerts and other performances take place when customers are not busy buying books. Similarly, the Instituto Moreira Salles hosts a wide range of interesting exhibitions in a building that houses a very popular café where a chic crowd congregates for cafézinhos between moments of art appreciation. Further along the avenue is Japan House, where exhibitions of Japan’s always exquisite arts and crafts are displayed alongside items for sale. It, too, has a café, this one naturally specialising in tea and Japanese delicacies to accompany it. Across the street and down a bit is the SESC building, where an observation deck allows visitors to take in the compendium of Avenida Paulista’s buildings, best appreciated at twilight, when the sky’s light fades, and the city’s lights illuminate the building façades.

Di Cavalcanti painting in the Pinacoteca

Although São Paulo is renowned for its architecture, visitors who appreciate green spaces will find plenty throughout the city. The largest and most popular is Parque Ibirapuera, a vast park where locals engage in a variety of sports. To stimulate the mind as well as the body, the immense Museu Afro Brasil is not to be missed. This magnificent agglomeration of items chronicling the African presence in Brazil, which has the second-largest population of African descent in the world, is housed in an enormous building within this park that is also home to a traditional Japanese pavilion, a planetarium, and a striking auditorium designed by Brazil’s most famous architect, Óscar Niemeyer, as is the park’s OCA exhibition centre.