São Paulo Is Becoming a City You Don't Want to Miss
Brazil’s economic engine now also offers culture, cuisine and big-ticket events worthy of a world-class city. Time for it to leverage these strengths to attract the international attention it deserves.
Welcome to the concrete Amazon.
Photographer: Fabio Vieira/FotoRua/NurPhoto via Getty Images
São Paulo is one of the world’s largest metropolises, yet relatively few international travelers want to visit it. For a megalopolis of 22 million people to receive only 1.6 million tourists from abroad between January and September is a laughable comparison with top tourism magnets such as Paris (with a metro area population half as large), which clocked nearly 16 million international visitors in 2023.
I must confess I have had the same allergy to São Paulo since childhood: My father used to drive the family up from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro on month-long, 4,500-mile round vacation trips, visiting every paradisiac beach on the way. His only condition? Not to spend a minute in São Paulo. He was horrified by the concrete jungle and its famously unpredictable traffic.