Concert at Sala São Paulo

Sala São Paulo is a concert hall built inside the Estação Júlio Prestes, the former headquarters and departure point of the Sorocabana Railway. Coffee barons founded the railway to carry coffee from the south-west of São Paulo state and Paraná to the port of Santos, and the station was built between 1926 and 1938 to designs by Cristiano Stockler das Neves, in a neoclassical Louis XVI style partly influenced by New York's old Pennsylvania Station.

The state government restored the building from 1997, and the concert hall opened on 9 July 1999. It is a shoebox-shaped room, like the great 19th-century concert halls, with around 1,500 seats on the main floor and in the boxes and balconies. The ceiling is the technical marvel: 15 panels, each weighing 7.5 tonnes, can be raised or lowered individually to change the volume of the hall between 12,000 and 28,000 cubic metres, and 26 velvet banners drop to fine-tune the sound. A floating floor on a neoprene slab isolates the hall from the vibrations of the trains that still run outside, and Brazilian walnut lines the concrete surfaces.

The resident orchestra is the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, OSESP, which plays a full season of symphonic and chamber concerts. A ticket for any concert is the best way to experience the building. The Osesp duas e trinta series of Friday afternoon concerts at a single price is a good option if you want to avoid a late evening, and the programme and ticket information are on the hall's website. If you cannot get to a concert, the hall also offers educational visits and a virtual visit online.

Arrive early to look around. The café-bar in the main hall serves coffee, sweets and snacks before concerts and during the interval, and the restaurant serves a buffet of contemporary and Brazilian dishes at lunch and dinner. There is parking at the hall, which is useful in the evening.

Sala São Paulo stands on Praça Júlio Prestes in Campos Elíseos, near Luz and Júlio Prestes stations, which places it close to the Museu da Língua Portuguesa in Estação da Luz and the Pinacoteca on Praça da Luz. Plan your journey home in advance after evening concerts. The phone line is staffed Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 18:00.