The Origins of the City: Patio do
Colegio Sao Paulo

The Patio do Colegio Sao Paulo is the site where the city of Sao Paulo was originally founded in 1554 – today, this name is used to refer to a historical Jesuit church and Jesuit school that are situated in that very spot. In fact, the city of Sao Paulo was begun when two Jesuits established a mission in the Brazilian wilderness, building up a small town and eventually linking their settlement to a neighboring town in the rainforest.

The Jesuit priests would have celebrated mass here, and in 1556, the adjacent school was completed in order to help educate the people who lived in the settlement through the following centuries. The Patio do Colegio Sao Paulo was a central component of life here, but later in 1653, both the church and the school were rebuilt after some internal conflict between the Jesuits and indigenous peoples.

It was only in 1953 that the area was returned to the Jesuits, and in order to return the Patio do Colegio Sao Paulo to its original appearance from the early colonial days, extensive restoration work was done. In 1979, a museum dedicated to one of Sao Paulo’s founders was established inside of the Patio do Colegio, and it contains over 600 important items: altars, colonial paintings, sculpture, Jesuit iconography, and even ancient documents.

The Patio do Colegio is also home to a library of over 20,000 books, both religious and historical, and this collection is part of the UNESCO conservation efforts in Brazil. Librarians are currently working on placing this catalog online, so that the whole world may benefit from the wealth of historical information available here – but for now, it’s worth the visit to this peaceful getaway, where you can learn about the earliest beginnings of Sao Paulo and see how far the city has come since the beginning of the 20th century.

There is also a scaled replica model of the Patio do Colegio Sao Paulo from its early days when the Sao Paulo settlement was established; the educational panels around it explain how the city developed and thrived throughout the centuries. For those who wish to visit the church and school, the buildings and museum are open from 9am to 5pm Tuesday through Sunday, with morning mass held on Sundays at 10am. Throughout the week, visitors are welcome to enter the church between 8:15am and 7pm, with the admission fees going to restorative work and conservational efforts.

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