About Activity
The Mercado Municipal de São Paulo — known to every local simply as the Mercadão — is one of the great food halls of South America, a soaring early 20th-century building whose stained-glass windows depicting scenes of Brazilian agriculture filter cathedral light onto stalls piled high with the extraordinary abundance of a continent. A private guided tour moves through the market's distinct quarters with purpose and appetite — pausing at the legendary mortadella sandwich counter where towering portions have been served since 1933, tasting tropical fruits whose names have no English equivalent, and learning from specialist vendors whose families have supplied São Paulo's finest restaurants for generations. Dried shrimp from the northeast, aged queijo minas from Minas Gerais, fresh-cut bacalhau from Portugal, and shelves of cachaça from every producing region in Brazil tell the story of a city built by immigration and shaped by the extraordinary diversity of the country that surrounds it — all within a single, magnificent, intoxicating building.
