The MASP building, a São Paulo landmark, turns 50

The São Paulo Museum of Art is one of the city’s most special landmarks. Home of the most important collection of European art in the southern hemisphere, the museum’s building is an artwork in itself. Conceived by Italian-born architect Lina Bo Bardi, it floats over the country’s most emblematic avenue, Avenida Paulista, 8.5 meters above the ground, leaving a 47-square-meter plaza underneath is. MASP has become a symbol of São Paulo’s modernity and cosmopolitan spirit. Today, the building celebrates its 50th anniversary.

MASP is considered to be the most important museum of Western art south of the Equator, with an 8,000-artwork collection spanning paintings, sculptures, artifacts, photographs, and pieces of clothing from every continent. It houses work from masters such as Raphael, Mantegna, Modigliani e Botticelli, from the Italian school, and Delacroix, Renoir, Monet, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, and Chagall, from Paris.

It is impossible to imagine São Paulo, Brazil’s economic center, without MASP. It would be like Paris without...