Embu das Artes

Embu began as a Jesuit mission in the seventeenth century and the church of Nossa Senhora do Rosario, with its convent and sacred art museum, is the surviving core - a whitewashed building with a carved interior, now surrounded by the metropolitan sprawl that reached and absorbed the village. From the 1970s artists and furniture makers settled in the old streets, and the weekend fair grew out of that: several hundred stalls of woodwork, ceramics, leather, jewellery and food filling the historic centre on Saturdays and Sundays, with permanent galleries and antique dealers in the houses behind. It is the standard weekend excursion from Sao Paulo, which means the quality ranges from serious craft to mass-produced souvenir.

What you actually see

• A seventeenth-century Jesuit church - with its convent and sacred art museum.
• A weekend crafts fair - hundreds of stalls filling the colonial streets.
• Furniture and woodwork galleries - the trade the artists brought in the 1970s.
• A village inside the metropolis - the old centre surrounded by sprawl.

When to go

Saturdays and Sundays for the fair. Half a day.

Honest expectations

The fair is the town's whole draw and on weekdays the place is quiet with most galleries shut. Quality on the stalls is very uneven. Traffic from Sao Paulo is heavy both ways at weekends and parking is difficult.

Nearby

Sao Paulo is east; Paranapiacaba is south-east beyond the city.