Embu das Artes

Embu began as a Jesuit mission in the sixteenth 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 1960s 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.

History

Embu's history began in 1554 with the Jesuit settlement of Bohi, later M'Boy, between the sea and the São Paulo uplands; in 1607 its lands passed to Fernão Dias, in 1690 the priest Belchior de Pontes began the church of the Rosary, and in 1760 the Jesuits were expelled from Brazil. The town's artistic name began in 1937, when the local santeiro Cássio M'Boy won first prize at the Paris exhibition, his pupil Sakai de Embu formed the Solano Trindade group of artists in 1962, and the arts and crafts fair launched in the late 1960s has drawn visitors ever since (Wikipedia, Embu das Artes).

Highlights

• 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 from the 1960s.
• A village inside the metropolis - the old centre surrounded by sprawl.

When to go

Saturdays and Sundays for the fair. Half a day.

Before you go

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.

Key facts