Sé Metropolitan Cathedral

This guide to the Sé Metropolitan Cathedral in São Paulo starts with a hidden detail in its neo-Gothic stonework: pineapples, coffee branches and armadillos carved among capitals meant to echo Cologne or Milan. It follows the cathedral's slow construction under German architect Maximilian Emil Hehl, begun in 1913 and delayed for decades by war and shortage before the towers were finally finished in 1967. You'll also hear about the crypt below the altar, where a Tupi chieftain named Tibiriçá, who once sheltered the first Jesuits on this plateau, was later laid to rest among the city's bishops.