Getting Your Bearings in Centro

Downtown, made simple

São Paulo is enormous, and first-timers often find Centro confusing. It isn't, once you hold two ideas in your head: there is an old center and a new center, and they sit on either side of a valley. Get that, and downtown falls into place from the Suite.

The two centers

• The old center — around Praça da Sé and the Pátio do Colégio, to the east. This is where the city began in 1554: the cathedral, the oldest streets, the first churches. The history of downtown starts here.
• The new center — around Praça da República and the Anhangabaú valley, to the west. This is where you're staying: the early-20th-century expansion of banks, theaters and the first skyscrapers.

Between them runs the Vale do Anhangabaú, crossed by the Viaduto do Chá, the iron viaduct that stitched the two halves of downtown together in the 1890s. Cross the viaduct and you pass from one era of the city to the other in about three minutes.

The spine is the metrô

You don't need to memorize streets. Praça da República is your anchor, and the metrô is your spine — two lines under the plaza reach almost everything. When in doubt, aim for a station.

Old center to the east, new center to the west, a viaduct across the valley between them, and your plaza in the middle. That's downtown.

Street sense, honestly

Centro is busy and rewarding by day, and like any big-city downtown it's quieter and more mixed after dark. The simple rules serve you well: keep to lively streets, keep your phone away when you're walking, carry a little cash and not much flash, and take an app-car late at night rather than long empty blocks on foot. Do that and you'll find Centro friendly, fascinating and completely walkable. When you're ready, the self-guided walks give you a route and a reason for every turn.