Sao Paulo history

Historically São Paulo has developed in a very different fashion to Brazil’s colonial coastal cities that boast a notable Portuguese heritage such as Salvador.

A mass celebrated in 1554 by Jesuits marked the beginnings of Piratininga as the city was formerly known. The original foundations of the Jesuit chapel built where this mass took place at Pateo do Collegio can still be seen today. Otherwise such antiquity is rare because São Paulo remained an unimportant backwater for centuries despite gold-mining and sugar cane enterprises.

But with São Paulo state’s advantages of a cooler climate and altitude, the rise of coffee production in the 19th century began the city’s rise to eventual economic domination of Brazil. The city grew courtesy of mass immigrations, particularly from Europe and Nordestino Brazilians, who came to service this coffee sector.

And even by the turn of the 20th-century when coffee’s predominance began to wane, the migrations continued as growth more focused on the city itself. Driven by a strong work ethos from migrants, commerce and the financial sectors began to flourish throughout the century.

A recent decade of economic growth in Brazil has seen the development of a large new lower-middle class although vast numbers of economic poor still habituate the favelas ringing São Paulo’s outskirts.