Budget · 3-hour walk · São Paulo
Centro Velho in three hours
The founding courtyard, the theatre, the market hall and the modernist tower above it all.
Sao Paulo is enormous and almost none of it is walkable, but the old centre is the exception: the few blocks where the city was founded in 1554, now surrounded by twenty million people. The Municipal Market is the stop worth the most time, and the mortadella sandwich in it is a genuine institution rather than a tourist invention.
The route, stop by stop
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Patio do Colegio
The Jesuit mission where the city was founded in 1554, rebuilt to the original plan with a small museum.
25 min here Walk here → -
Theatro Municipal
The 1911 opera house where the Modern Art Week of 1922 detonated Brazilian modernism.
30 min here Walk here → -
Municipal Market
Stained glass, three hundred stalls, and the mortadella sandwich that people queue an hour for.
45 min here Walk here → -
Edificio Copan
Niemeyer's wave-fronted apartment block, home to five thousand people and with its own postcode.
20 min here Walk here →
More in São Paulo
Every walking route in São Paulo, or the full São Paulo guide for where to stay and what a day costs.