When I enter Pateo do Collegio I see myself in a peaceful garden that immediately makes me forget I’m in Downtown São Paulo. The breakfast with some types of bread handmade by Jesuit priests is a way to start the morning shifted in a different gear, eating for hours and just letting all that history sink in.
My wife and I like to walk around that area – we get off at some subway station and go walking through Historic Downtown, which I find beautiful. Even the ugly part of it is beautiful…
And when you arrive, in general, it’s empty! There are always few people going by, except when a mass is taking place, so it’s totally calm. It’s crazy how so few paulistanos imagine themselves having breakfast Downtown, in the root of the city, you know? It’s a joy.
That’s why this is really a tourist day out to do, because many paulistanos are tourists in Historic Downtown when visiting the Pateo’s museum, checking out the original wall that’s been there for centuries… walking around the place lighthearted leads you to incredible discoveries.
And all of the sudden you look around and realize that São Paulo was born in that spot. And you really can’t deny that’s exactly the place where it was supposed to first rise.
São Paulo has an anti-hero thing. It seems as if it is saying: “I don’t want you to like me”. But when I’m in a place like Pateo do Collegio, I think to myself: “Hey, let me love you!” It’s so hard to like it, that when you do, you like it from the bottom of your heart!
