Every Day Is Special: January 25 – Foundation Day in Sao Paulo, Brazil

January 25 – Foundation Day in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Posted on January 25, 2017

If you had asked me, earlier this morning, what the largest city in the Americas was (that is, in North AND South America), I would've confidently guessed “New York City.”

I would've been wrong!

Sao Paulo is the 12^th largest city in the world, by population, and the largest city in the Americas. It's also the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere.

Naturally, that means it's also the largest city in Brazil and in South America!

Founded as a Jesuit college by Portuguese and Spanish priests, on this date in 1554, and named after St. Paul, Sao Paulo grew to become a village and then a town and then (in the early 1700s) a city. It started out as a very poor, humble settlement but is now the largest economy (as measured by GDP – Gross Domestic Product) in Latin America and in the Southern Hemisphere.

Sao Paulo is also a total melting pot. Naturally, plenty of people are Portuguese, Spanish, indio, and mixtures of these three, but the city is also home to to the largest Arab, Italian, and Japanese diasporas (a diaspora is the scattering of people from their original homeland) and also one of the largest urban Jewish populations in the world.

Sao Paulo is known as Land of the Drizzle (Terra da Garoa).