There’s a line in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities that could have been written for Sao Paulo:
“You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.” There are a thousand adventures to be had and lives to live in the cosmopolitan, cultural smorgasbord that is Brazil’s most populous city; and the fourth largest conurbation in the world.

A symphony of high culture and youth culture, gritty and decadent, Sao Paulo is no postcard at first glance, but its beauty is in its quirks, contrasts and endless surprises; a beautiful crumbling cathedral set against glittering skyscrapers or a hipster bar hidden in a faded modernist apartment block.