Centro Histórico in São Paulo, Brazil

The best place to begin a tour is at the

, an expansive square shaded by tropical trees and dominated by the hulking Catholic

is always busy with hawkers, beggars, shoeshiners and business men rushing between meetings. Evangelists with megaphones proselytize on the steps of the cathedral - a symbol of the war between Christians for the souls of the poor that dominates contemporary urban Brazil.

Like São Paulo itself, the cathedral is more remarkable for its size than its beauty and is an unconvincing mish-mash of neo-Gothic and Renaissance. A narrow nave is squeezed uncomfortably between two monstrous 97-m-high spires beneath a bulbous copper cupola. It was designed in 1912 by the inappropriately named engineer Maximiliano Hell, inaugurated in the 1950s and fitted with its full complement of 14 towers only in 2002. The interior is bare but for a few stained glass windows designed in Germany and capitals decorated with Brazilian floral motifs.

There are a few other sights of interest around the

. Next door to the cathedral itself and housed in a 1930s art deco building is the

The site of the founding of São Paulo can be reached by walking north from the bottom of the Praça da Sé (farthest from the cathedral) along Rua Santa Teresa and to the Praça Pátio do Colégio. Here lies the

, www.pateodocollegio.com.br

. Jesuit priests, led by 18-year-old Padre José de Anchieta arrived here in 1554, when the area was a tiny clearing on a hill in the midst of a vast forest. They made camp and instructed their domicile indigenous Guarani to construct a simple wattle and daub hut. They inaugurated the building with a celebration of Mass on 25 January 1554, the feast of the conversion of São Paulo. Their simple hut took the saint's name, the 'Colégio de São Paulo de Piratinga'. The hut became a school for converted

seduced from the forests around. The school became a church and the church gave its name - São Paulo - to a settlement for

slaving raids into the Brazilian interior.

In 1760, the Jesuits were expelled from the city they founded, for opposing the

and their indigenous slave trade. But the Pátio do Colégio (as the complex of buildings came to be known) remained, becoming the palace of the fledgling province's Portuguese colonial captains general, and then of its Brazilian imperial governors. The church's tower fell down in 1886, and shortly after the whole building, but for one piece of wattle and daub wall, was demolished. The Jesuits didn't return to São Paulo until 1954

but they had long memories and immediately set about building an exact replica of their original church and college, which is what stands today. Most of the buildings are occupied by the

. This preserves, amongst other items, a modernist and not altogether sympathetic painting of the priest, by Italian Albino Menghini, bits

of his corpse (which is now that of a saint after Anchieta was canonized by Pope John Paul II), a 17th-century font used to baptize the

and a collection of Guaraní art and artefacts from the colonial era.

The exhibition spaces, cultural centres and concert halls of the

, www.bb.com.br/appbb/portal/bb/ ctr/sp/index.jsp,

can be reached by turning immediately west from the front of the Pátio do Colégio along Rua do Tesouro and then right for a block along Rua Álvares Penteado. These are housed in an attractive art deco building with a pretty glass ceiling. Many of the galleries are contained within the banks original vaults, some of which retain their massive iron doors.

The most beautiful of all the churches in São Paulo is the Benedictine

, known as the

, www.mosteiro.org.br. Benedictines arrived on this site in 1598, shortly after the Jesuits and, like them, proceeded to proselytize the indigenous people. Despite their long history in the city the monastery is a modern church dating from the 1920s. It was designed by Munich-based architect Richard Bernal in homage to the English Norman style. Its façade is strikingly similar to Southwell cathedral in Nottinghamshire, though with added Rhineland roofs and baroque revival flourishes. But few visit São Bento for the exterior. The church preserves a striking Beuronese interior painted by Dom Adelbert Gresnicht, a Dutch monk of the Order. The style is named after techniques developed by Benedictines in the monastery of Beuron in southwest Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It finds much inspiration in Byzantine art and is characterized by compressed perspective and iconic, almost exaggerated colours. São Bento is one of the finest Beuronese churches in the world. The stained glass (and much of the statuary) is also by Dom Adelbert. Most of the windows show scenes from the life of St Benedict with the most beautiful, at the far end of the nave, showing Our Lady ascending to heaven guided by the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. The church has Brazil's finest organ which is given its own festival in November and December every year. And with this being a Benedictine monastery, there is of course a temple to commerce: the shop sells delicious sweets home-made by the monks in their bakery.

Immediately in front of the monastery, at the corner of Avenida São João and Rua Libero Badaró, is the

was unique and beautiful, the buildings that replaced it looked tawdry and crowded

next to the New York it longed to imitate.

Around the corner is another archi- tectural pastiche, the

and new neighbourhoods with infant skyscraper flats.

There are a few interesting sites here. Most notable is the

, www.traccoitalia.com.br, a rather unremarkable restaurant in the city's tallest building with a truly remarkable view from the observation deck. Arrive half an hour before sunset for the best balance of natural and artificial light, and bring a tripod. The skyscraper immediately in front of the

is Oscar Niemeyer's

, built in 1951 in a spate of design by the architect, which also included the nearby

,

and the

From the corner of Praça da República, a 10-minute walk southeast along Rua 24 de Maio, brings you back into the main part of the city centre and Metrô Anhangabaú, via the ugly, wedding-cake

and the

steel bridge riding over the small, dirty

park and the Avenida 23 de Maio and 9 de Julho highways.