MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo, known to everyone simply as MASP, was founded in 1947 by the media magnate Assis Chateaubriand and the Italian critic Pietro Maria Bardi. Its home on Avenida Paulista, designed by Lina Bo Bardi and inaugurated in 1968, is a landmark of modern architecture: a long block held up by four pillars and two great beams, leaving a 74-metre open span at street level. That covered space, the vão livre, works as a public square, and the building and its collection are both protected as national heritage.

The collection runs to more than 8,000 works and is often described as the most comprehensive holding of Western art in Latin America. Italian painting includes Raphael's Resurrection of Christ alongside Titian, Botticelli, Mantegna and Bellini, while the French rooms take in Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, Manet, Degas, Monet, Gauguin and Matisse. There are also works by Goya, El Greco, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Gogh, Gainsborough, Constable and Turner. Just as important for visitors from abroad is the Brazilian holding, with 17 paintings by Candido Portinari and work by Tarsila do Amaral, Anita Malfatti, Di Cavalcanti, Alfredo Volpi and Lasar Segall.

In March 2025 the museum opened the Pietro Maria Bardi building next door, a 14-storey black tower linked to the original by an underground passage. It roughly doubled the exhibition space, so a full visit now takes longer than it used to. Allow at least two to three hours if you want to see the collection and the temporary shows.

Practical points matter here. MASP is closed on Mondays and open from 10:00 to 18:00 most days, until 20:00 on Tuesdays and 21:00 on Fridays. Tuesdays are free for everyone and Friday evenings are free from 18:00, but tickets must be booked online even on free days, so book as early as you can. Children under 14 must be with an adult. The museum offers free tours in Libras, with audio description or adapted for neurodivergent visitors, booked by email.

The Trianon-MASP station on the Green Line of the metro is right outside. Café MASP and the MASP A Baianeira restaurant, both run with chef Manuelle Ferraz, are in the two buildings, so you can break up a long visit without leaving.