São Paulo Metropolitan Cathedral

Introduction

The São Paulo Metropolitan Cathedral (Catedral da Sé) is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of São Paulo, standing on Praça da Sé at the city's historic zero point. Its foundation stone was laid in 1913 under the city's first archbishop, Duarte Leopoldo e Silva, to a neo-Gothic design by German architect Maximilian Emil Hehl; it was dedicated in 1954 for São Paulo's 400th anniversary, though the towers were only finished in 1967. The building runs 111 m long and 46 m wide, with 92 m towers and a 30 m dome inspired by Florence's cathedral, seating 8,000 and using over 800 tonnes of fine marble. Inside, the five-aisled basilica's capitals are carved with Brazilian motifs — coffee branches, pineapples and armadillos. The crypt below the main altar is an underground church in its own right, its marble reliefs telling the stories of Job and St Jerome; it holds the tombs of every archbishop plus the 16th-century cacique Tibiriçá, who welcomed the Jesuits, and regent Diogo Feijó, with the remains of the Jesuit airship pioneer Bartolomeu de Gusmão transferred here in 2004. The 1954 Balbiani & Rossi organ has 12,000 pipes, among the largest in Latin America, and the east tower's 61 Dutch bells form the continent's largest carillon. A full renovation ran from 2000 to 2002, and the cathedral anchors any old-town walking route.

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