A compact neighborhood nestled between the Avenida Paulista and the old city center, Bixiga is Sao Paulo’s most accessible answer to Little Italy. The district also boasts one of the city’s most traditional samba schools, Vai Vai, one of its oldest professional theaters, Teatro Brasileiro de Comedia, and a high density of bars and restaurants. (For more on Brazil’s biggest city, see the BrazilMax São Paulo Travel Guide. For nearby hotel tips, scroll down to the end of this page.)
Bixiga old-timers, especially those with Italian monikers, jealously guard their neighborhood's ambiance and social institutions. Until late afternoon, the narrow streets (10 meters wide, compared to an average of 16 meters in other parts of the city built in the same turn-of-the-century period) are populated by folks who probably knew each other's grandparents. At night, cantinas and bars, many now seedy or hopelessly touristy, take over. Though Bixiga has lost some of its charm and popularity, it remains an icon to 20th century immigration and bohemia.
You will not find "Bixiga" marked on any modern city map. By 1914, the municipal government had already decreed that it should be bureaucratically swallowed up, making it part of the Bela Vista district. Public dissatisfaction with the change did not spark hunger strikes or outraged sieges on City Hall: instead, everybody just kept calling it Bixiga.
The old name, common by the late 1700s, carries on today, despite the fact that when it's spelled with an "e," as "Bexiga," it means "bladder." Historians disagree over the origins of the name, but among the theories is one about a long-gone rancher who operated there and specialized in selling cattle bladders. Another is that it was once a refuge for the city's smallpox victims, since the plural, "bexigas," translates as smallpox. Yet another explanation, less interesting but just as likely, is that the area became the namesake of Antonio Bexiga, a man who had a small farm in the area. (For Bexiga's contemporaries, his main claim to fame was apparently that the 19th century French naturalist and Amazon explorer Auguste de Saint-Hilaire once slept at the farm.)
As late as 1870, according to local historian Ernani Silva Bruno, partridges, deer, and "even escaped slaves" were hunted in the region.
A few decades later, it became a magnet for Italian immigrants. Simple home-builders arrived, awarded themselves the high-sounding title of "campomestre," carved floor plans into the ground with their umbrellas, and set about constructing shotgun homes typically around seven meters wide and 50 meters deep.
As told by the late Armandinho do Bixiga, longtime curator, co-founder and spirit behind the "Memory of Bixiga" Museum (Armandinho had a real surname, but like Brazilian soccer players he never used it), the first "cantinas" were bars with a "bring-your-own" policy, at least where food was concerned. Interminable card games determined who paid for the drinks, and around 11 p.m. everybody unwrapped their sausage sandwiches (on Italian bread, of course) and had a hearty snack.
The first "cantina" to serve its own food emerged around 1910, a mom-and-pop operation with a menu that consisted entirely of the "daily special." It later relocated to cater to the theater crowds. By the 1930s, a handful of little restaurants was already in evidence, including some that are still around today: Villa Tavola and Roperto.
The neighborhood remained relatively calm until the end of World War II. Then, in 1947, the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia (TBC) moved into the former headquarters of a pro-Mussolini fascist outfit, the building having been appropriated when Brazil entered the war in support of the Allies. The above mentioned "cantina" moved in nearby, and soon somebody opened a bar. The movie production company Vera Cruz set up shop in the TBC building, and bohemia was on a winning streak.
Today, the neighborhood is home to sundry theaters, dozens of restaurants, and countless bars. The theaters tend to concentrate around Rua Rui Barbosa – which “paulistanos” like to call the "Broadway Paulista."
The restaurants and bars each have carved out for themselves a stretch of Rua 13 de Maio. The Brazilian popular music (MPB), rock and reggae musicians whose tunes blare nightly into Bixiga's crowded streets may not know it, but they are merely carrying on the neighborhood's musical traditions. The Italians had their "seresteiros," who serenaded not only eligible young women but anybody else who would listen. Some local cantinas keep the tradition alive with in-house musicians who make the rounds of tables.
Bixiga has a strong samba tradition. As in Rio de Janeiro, clubs called samba schools organize São Paulo's annual Carnival parade and compete for top prize awarded by judges. Thanks in part to the samba school Vai Vai (meaning "Go Go"), many of São Paulo's most famous "sambistas" - like Pato N'Agua (literally, Duck in the Water) - have frequented the neighborhood over the years. Black presence in the neighborhood has been constant since the abolition of slavery in 1888: many poor blacks established themselves in "cortiços" - cramped tenement buildings where whole families live in single rooms. Some of Bixiga's first "cortiços" had names like "Navio Parado"(Stationary Ship) and "Vaticano" (Vatican), the latter contradicting its dearth of Italian residents. The cross-cultural influence was so thorough, said film maker and theater director Emilio Fontana, himself a Bixiga native, that he remembers hearing blacks speak Portuguese with Italian accents as a child.
The influence worked the other way as well, and the musical miscegenation gave birth to something called Italian Samba. The father was Adoniran Barbosa ("Tren das Onze," "Saudosa Maloca"). Both Barbosa and his musical offspring were adopted by the Bixiga. Though he played samba, Barbosa built a reputation for emphasizing both his São Paulo roots and his Italian influence, putting on a heavy accent and deliberately working into his lyrics the grammatical errors common to Italian immigrants.
Eventually, the rest of São Paulo began to encroach on Bixiga. Overpasses forged through, avenues widened and service industries - symbolized by auto mechanics - put up their non-Italian shingles.
But enough of the old flavor remained to spark successive counter-reformations to "save" the Bixiga. Facades have been painted, houses refurbished. The near demise of the TBC rallied community and municipal interest.
Then there's Golf Hill. Cultural purists make occasional assaults on the Morro dos Ingleses (English Hill) and its sidekick Rua dos Ingleses (English Street). They want to change the names to something more appropriately Italian. The hill overlooking Bixiga provides possibly the best view-point of old downtown São Paulo you can get without climbing to the top of a skyscraper.
What purists don't understand is that there's a good reason behind the name. As Armandinho used to tell it, around the turn of the century the city's British community installed their gold course on that piece of high ground. Few Brits lived in the vicinity, it seems, but a road (now called Brigadeiro Luis Antonio) back to an ex-pat sanctuary, Santo Amaro neighborhood, provided a simple get-away for Sunday golfers after the 19th hole.
Armandinho recalled his father telling stories of how neighborhood boys used to collect balls that hackers sent into the rough. And what started as a shoe box collection soon became big business. Given the elevated costs of importing balls from England, those with high handicaps - who tended to lose their balls more often - began offering the youngsters cold, hard Contas do Rei (then the local currency) to get them back.
Eventually, the gold course fell to urban development. Leading families of the period built homes on the former fairways, people like "Coffee King" Geremias Lunardelli, "Flour King" Giulio Parente, "Mr. Hat" Ramenzoni, and the multi-talented Maluf family that, among other things, produced former Mayor Paulo Maluf.
Bixiga Online
Bixiga.com.br
Order the book Memorias de Armandinho do Bixiga from Livraria Cultura (in Portuguese)
Memorial of the Immigrant Museum - not located in Bixiga but features the district. Click on “Informações/Serviços” for the address, phone number and email.
Bela Vista Hotel Recommendations
* For suggestions in other parts of town, see our São Paulo Hotel Recommendations page.
L'Hotel
This elegant hotel is a popular setting for fashion photo shots and the filming of scenes in Brazilian telenovelas and advertising spots. A unique and popular service is the hotel’s “personal shopper.” Hotel employees track down anything that can be found for sale in São Paulo, including hard-to-find items; they’ll even bring clothing to your room to try on, select, and purchase. Alameda Campinas, 266; telephone: +55 11 2183-0505.
Maksoud Plaza
This 23-story atrium-hotel became the place to be after Sinatra inaugurated it with his first South American concert in 1980. Before cable TV, it was one of the few places in town with the US Armed Services Network and thus one of the only places in Brazil to watch Kirk Gibson and the Dodgers beat the A’s in the 1988 World Series. The bartender didn’t appreciate leaving the game on, but as long as I ordered caipirinhas it was OK. After one of the games, my wife and I ran into Caetano Veloso out front, guitar in had, waiting for a cab. In the 1990s investment bankers from New York and London dropped anchor at the Maksoud. Alameda Campinas, 150; telephone: +55 11 3145 8000.
