São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil and in South America, with nearly 18 million citizens within its metropolitan area. Known among its citizens as “the city that never stops” and “the locomotive of the country”, the capital of São Paulo State is very cosmopolitan and open. The city hosts the most traditional Brazilian University and has a rich academic life that attracts people from all over the country. São Paulo is renowned for its cuisine. As a reflex of the aforementioned cosmopolitanism, the city offers great typical restaurants of every part of the world. Italian pizza, Japanese sushi, Chinese chicken, French cheese, the best of those worlds can be found in São Paulo.



The cultural side of the city is also famous among Brazilians. Here you can find a large number of theaters, museums and public libraries unparalleled in the nation. There are also, of course, soccer stadiums in the city, where the best of the Brazilian national sport is shown every weekend. Visitors should not miss the MASP (Brazil's premier museum), the Paulista Avenue (financial heart of South America) and the legendary Morumbi Stadium, cradle to some of the world's top players. This huge city has an intense, if recent, political past. Ever since Brazil became a Republic, São Paulo has been in the center of the country’s political life. In this sense, the city was, in the early 1980s, the heart of the “Diretas Já”, a popular movement that claimed for the end of the military government and eventually spread through the country. Now, democratic, modern and open, São Paulo is still in the center of Brazilian politics.

Global Classrooms: Sao Paulo Navigation