The prospect of arriving in South America's most populous city, spread over an area of 30,000 square kilometres, is likely to seem a little daunting. However, while it's true that urban development has been carried out with an almost complete lack of planning, São Paulo is far more manageable than you might imagine. Greater São Paulo is enormous, but the main shopping, entertainment and hotel districts are easy to move between, and the areas of historic interest are extremely limited. Even so, São Paulo's streets form something of a maze and even for the briefest of visits it's well worth buying a street guide, available at any newspaper kiosk.

São Paulo's traditional centre is the area around Praça da Sé and Praça da República , the two sections of the city bisected by a broad avenue, the Vale do Anhangabaú , which in turn is bridged by a pedestrian crossing, the Viaduto do Chá . The area around Praça da Sé is where you'll find both the Pátio do Colégio, which dates back to the early years of the Jesuit mission settlement, and the commercial district of banks, offices and shops, known as the Triângulo - originally comprising Rua Direita, Quinze de Novembro, São Bento, and Praça Antônio Prado. The area around Praça da República now forms an extension of the main commercial district, but there are many hotels and apartment buildings here, too.

The bairros to the east of the centre contained some of the city's first industrial suburbs and were home for many immigrants, but with the exception of the Museu da Hospedaria do Imigrante there's hardly anything of interest here. North of the centre is the red-light district of Luz , until recently known only as the rather seedy location of the city's railway stations, but now being developed into a major cultural hub. Due north of here, across the Rio Tietê, is the Rodoviária Tietê , the city's main bus station serving points throughout Brazil and neighbouring countries.

Just south of the commercial district are Bela Vista - usually referred to as "Bixiga", São Paulo's "Little Italy", focused on Rua 13 de Maio - and Liberdade , with its centre around Praça da Liberdade and Rua Galvão Bueno. Traditionally a Japanese neighbourhood, Liberdade is gradually being transformed by the arrival of new immigrants from other east Asian countries.

To the southwest of the centre is Avenida Paulista , an avenue of high-rise office buildings which divides the city's traditional centre from the Jardins , one of the most prestigious of São Paulo's middle- and upper-class suburbs. Extending south and west are yet more plush suburbs, such as Itaim Bibi and Vila Olímpia , with upmarket restaurants and nightspots. Cutting across Avenida Paulista into the Jardins is Rua Augusta , which begins in the centre at Praça Franklin Roosevelt; many of São Paulo's best restaurants and shopping streets are located around here. West of the Jardins is Vila Madalena , and beyond here Pinheiros , mainly residential neighbourhoods that are fast developing as two of the city's most fashionable nightspots. Just across the Rio Pinheiros is the vast campus of the Universidade de São Paulo and the Instituto Butantã, while to the southeast lies the Parque Ibirapuera , one of the city's great parks.

Greater São Paulo includes huge, sprawling, industrial suburbs where people are housed in a mixture of grim-looking high-rise tenements, small houses and, on just about every patch of wasteland, favelas - the slum homes for some two million of the city's inhabitants. The most important industrial areas are the so-called "A B C D" municípios of Santo André, São Bernardo, São Caetano and Diadema, the traditional centre of Brazil's motor vehicle industry and of the city's militantly left-wing political tradition. In the 1940s, Santo André elected Brazil's first Communist Party mayor, while out of the Metal Workers' Union and the auto workers' strikes of the late 1970s - which heralded the end of the country's supposed economic "miracle" - emerged Lula, the leader of the PT, the Workers' Party.