University of São Paulo campus tour: the Clock Tower, FAU and beyond

The University of São Paulo, known everywhere in Brazil as USP, was founded in 1934 by the state of São Paulo. It brought together several older schools, among them a law school dating from 1827, an engineering school and a medical school, and added a new faculty of philosophy, sciences and letters staffed partly by young European scholars. Today it is the best-known public university in the country. Its main campus, the Cidade Universitária, is a broad green district in Butantã, on the west bank of the Pinheiros River. This guide covers what to see there, how student life works, and the parts of USP scattered across the city.

The shape of the Cidade Universitária

The campus is large, more than 350 hectares, and was laid out from the 1950s onwards for the motor car, with wide avenues, roundabouts and buildings set far apart among trees. Distances are longer than they look on a map.

• The centre is the Praça do Relógio, the big open square with the Clock Tower, beside the old rectorate building.
• The humanities, architecture and the Brasiliana library lie to one side of the square, within walking distance of each other.
• The Polytechnic School, USP's engineering school, occupies a long run of buildings further in, with the sciences and the biomedical institutes beyond.
• The river side has the sports centre and the Olympic rowing lane.

The campus has three main gates, and internal buses loop around it.

The Clock Tower

The Clock Tower stands alone in the middle of the Praça do Relógio: a slender slab of concrete fifty metres high, designed by the architect Rino Levi and carved with reliefs representing the fields of knowledge. Around its base runs a motto that translates roughly as "In the universe of culture, the centre is everywhere". At sunset the square fills with runners and people walking home.

The FAU building

A few minutes away is the building architects come to São Paulo to see. The Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, universally called FAU, was designed by João Batista Vilanova Artigas and completed in 1969. From outside it is a great windowless concrete box held up by slender columns that taper to a point. Inside, it has no front door at all: the ground floor flows in from the garden, broad ramps link the levels, and studios, library and workshops open onto a central hall lit from the roof. Artigas meant it as a statement about openness, and it remains one of the key works of Brazilian modernism.

The Brasiliana library

Close to FAU, the Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin opened in 2013 to house the collection of rare books and manuscripts about Brazil that the bibliophile José Mindlin and his wife Guita assembled over a lifetime and gave to the university. The building, with book-lined galleries around a tall central hall, also holds exhibitions that are usually open to the public.

Engineering, science and medicine

The Polytechnic School, founded in 1893 and known simply as Poli, is one of the largest units on campus and has trained many of Brazil's engineers. The physics, chemistry, mathematics and biomedical institutes are nearby. The Faculty of Medicine is not on this campus: it has its own historic building beside the great teaching hospital in the Pinheiros district, a few kilometres east.

Just outside the university gates is the Instituto Butantan, a separate state research institute famous for its work on snake venoms and vaccines, with gardens and small museums that make a pleasant visit.

A green campus, with capybaras

Much of the Cidade Universitária is parkland, and it shelters a surprising amount of wildlife. The best-known residents are the capybaras that graze on the grass beside the rowing lane, a two-kilometre stretch of water along the river side of the campus where rowers train at dawn. The sports centre next to it has pools, tracks and courts for the university community.

How student life works

USP is organised into faculties, schools and institutes, and students belong to one from the start; entry is by competitive examination. Teaching is in Portuguese, although some postgraduate programmes offer courses in English.

Few students live on campus. There is a residence complex with limited places, and most people commute from home or share flats nearby. Social life runs through each faculty's student centre and athletic association, and through the subsidised university restaurants, where much of the campus meets at lunch. USP also has campuses in several other cities of São Paulo state, including Ribeirão Preto, São Carlos and Piracicaba.

USP across the city

• The Law School: on Largo de São Francisco in the historic centre, where it has taught since 1827.
• Museu do Ipiranga: the palatial museum of Brazilian history in the Ipiranga district, on the site linked with the declaration of independence, is run by the university.
• Museum of Contemporary Art: USP's modern art collection is shown in a building beside Ibirapuera Park.

The neighbourhood

Butantã itself is mostly residential. Across the river, Pinheiros and Vila Madalena are full of restaurants, bars, bookshops and street art, and are where students go in the evening. Avenida Paulista, the city's main cultural avenue, is a few metro stops further.

Visiting the campus

The Praça do Relógio, FAU and the Brasiliana can be seen in a couple of hours. Access for visitors and vehicles can vary by day and time, and guided visits are offered only on occasion, so check the university's official pages for current information.

Getting there and around

• By metro: Line 4 (Yellow) runs to Butantã station, from where buses continue through the campus.
• By train: the suburban line along the Pinheiros River has a Cidade Universitária station on the opposite bank.
• By air: Guarulhos is the international airport, on the far side of the city; Congonhas, for domestic flights, is closer. Allow generous time for traffic.
• Weather: summer afternoons often bring heavy rain, so mornings are the safer choice.

Where families usually base themselves

Pinheiros and Vila Madalena are the most convenient attractive areas, a short metro or taxi ride from the campus. The Paulista and Jardins districts have the widest choice of hotels, and Paulista is on the same metro line. For another great Latin American university campus, see our UNAM guide.

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Cover photo: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons