Monumento às Bandeiras

This guide to the Monumento às Bandeiras in São Paulo opens with an irony carved into the stone itself: the sculptors who shaped these pioneer figures were, by several accounts, descendants of the people the bandeirantes had hunted. It follows Victor Brecheret's 1920 design, decades stalled by a coup and a war, and the later teams of sculptors and stonemasons who modeled and cut the granite hauled here from a quarry in Mauá. Look closely at the chisel marks in front of you as you listen.