For visitors and locals alike, the fact that São Paulo's history extends back for over four centuries, well beyond the late nineteenth-century coffee boom, usually goes completely unnoticed. Catapulted virtually overnight from being a sleepy, provincial market town into one of the western hemisphere's great cities, there are few places in the world that have as comprehensively turned their backs on the past as São Paulo has done. In the nineteenth century, most of colonial São Paulo was levelled and replaced by a disorganized patchwork of wide avenues and large buildings, the process repeating itself ever since; today, not only has the city's colonial architectual heritage all but vanished, but there's little physical evidence of the coffee boom decades either.

Nevertheless, a few relics have, somehow, escaped demolition and offer hints of São Paulo's bygone eras. What remains is hidden away discreetly in corners, scattered throughout the city, often difficult to find but all the more thrilling when you do. There is no shortage of museums , but with a few significant exceptions they are disappointing for a city of São Paulo's stature. Collections have frequently been allowed to deteriorate and exhibits are generally poorly displayed. Fortunately, museum charges are negligible, around $1, and are only given in the text below where they are above this figure.

There are several sights associated with the vast influx of immigrants to the city, and it's worth visiting some of the individual bairros, detailed in the text, where the immigrants and their descendants have established communities: the food, as you'd expect, is just one reason to do this.