{"id":197241,"date":"2015-07-15T13:50:26","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T16:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=197241"},"modified":"2015-09-14T14:40:50","modified_gmt":"2015-09-14T17:40:50","slug":"a-600-million-year-old-sao-paulo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/a-600-million-year-old-sao-paulo\/","title":{"rendered":"A 600-million-year old S\u00e3o Paulo"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"P\u00e1tio

L\u00c9O RAMOS<\/span>P\u00e1tio do Col\u00e9gio<\/em>, pavement in gray Mau\u00e1 graniteL\u00c9O RAMOS<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Geologist Eliane Del Lama wants to show visitors interested in knowing a little more about the origins of the city of S\u00e3o Paulo, more than just the buildings and monuments that depict parts of the 461-year-history of South America\u2019s biggest metropolis. Working with four other researchers, she laid out a walking tour of the old center of the city in which she calls attention to the types of stone most frequently used in the construction and ornamentation of buildings and works of art that make up what Del Lama calls the constructed Paulistano geological heritage. Her purpose in telling a little about the history of the materials that helped write the story of S\u00e3o Paulo is to show people that geology is closer to their daily lives than they think. \u201cGeology is usually associated with prospecting for oil and minerals, but a geologist\u2019s work goes well beyond that,\u201d says Del Lama, a professor at the Geosciences Institute of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP).<\/p>\n

The geotourism tour of the old center of S\u00e3o Paulo plotted by Del Lama and her collaborators was published in June 2015 in the journal Geoheritage<\/i><\/em>. It identifies 19 points of interest on a 6.5-kilometer trail that can be traveled on foot or accessed from the Metro system. Most of these buildings and monuments were erected at the end of the 19th<\/sup> century and beginning of the 20th<\/sup> when a S\u00e3o Paulo built of lath and plaster (packed mud supported with wooden elements), gave way to a city of masonry, embryo of the future metropolis. \u201cWe selected the well-known buildings and monuments that featured the widest variety of stone,\u201d Del Lama recalls.<\/p>\n

The trail starts at P\u00e1tio do Col\u00e9gio<\/i><\/em>, the point from which the city grew. It was there, in 1554 on a high flat mound encircled by the Tamanduate\u00ed River and the Anhangaba\u00fa Creek, that Jesuit priests Manoel da N\u00f3brega and Jos\u00e9 de Anchieta established the site of the Col\u00e9gio S\u00e3o Paulo de Piratininga<\/i><\/em> with the consent of Chief Tibiri\u00e7\u00e1 of the Guaian\u00e1 Indian tribe who were living in the region. Practically nothing is left of the first shed, which was replaced a century later by a colonial style building that was destroyed following the expulsion of the Jesuits from Brazil in 1759. Anyone passing the site today will see a replica of the old school building, built of masonry in 1954-1979. A remnant of the Jesuit era is an internal wall of lath-and-plaster, the same material used to erect, in the same neighborhood, the city\u2019s first house and the mansion owned by the Marquesa de Santos, later occupied in 1834-1867 by Domitila de Castro Canto e Melo, lover of Emperor Pedro I.<\/p>\n

\"078-081_Geoturismo_233\"<\/a>The foundation of the mansion was formed of blocks of a light gray granitic rock known as Itaquera granite, taken from a quarry that operated for more than a century in the district of Itaquera, on the East Side of S\u00e3o Paulo. Easy access to that rock\u2014before than, ornamental stone was imported\u2014made possible its use in various structures in the historic center. The oldest of the city\u2019s works of art, sculptured in Itaquera granite in 1814, is the Obelisco da Mem\u00f3ria<\/i><\/em>. Also known as the Pir\u00e2mide do Piques<\/i><\/em>, it stands next to the Anhangaba\u00fa Metro station, where thousands of people pass every day without noticing it. It was designed by engineer Daniel M\u00fcller and built by master sculptor Vicente Pereira. It was situated beyond the Anhangaba\u00fa Creek on the edge of the city from which ran the road laid out by M\u00fcller to connect the state capital with the interior regions.<\/p>\n

The S\u00e3o Paulo-gray
\n<\/strong>Near the P\u00e1tio de Col\u00e9gio<\/i><\/em>, one of the two buildings of the S\u00e3o Paulo State Department of Justice and Defense of Citizen Empowerment, designed by architect Ramos de Azevedo and inaugurated in 1896, was built on a foundation of Itaquera granite. \u201cThat granite built the S\u00e3o Paulo of the early 20th<\/sup> century,\u201d Del Lama observes. The light shades of this stone are not the only ones that can be observed in the vicinity. The square is entirely paved in a darker granite, the Mau\u00e1 gray granite from Mau\u00e1 and Ribeir\u00e3o Pires, municipalities in the S\u00e3o Paulo Metropolitan Region. The walls of the Tribunal da Al\u00e7ada Civil<\/i><\/em> building across from the P\u00e1tio de Col\u00e9gio<\/i><\/em> exhibit the rosy hues typical of pink Itupeva granite. This may be the same stone seen on the fa\u00e7ade of the Bank of Brazil Cultural Center, which dates from the late 1920s and combines the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles. It is the second stop on the trail.<\/p>\n

The route crosses the historic center, a triangle bounded by Boa Vista and L\u00edbero Badar\u00f3 streets and Jo\u00e3o Mendes Square and extending northeastward as far as the Mercado Municipal<\/i><\/em>, which was built on a Itupeva pink granite foundation, and northwestward as far as Largo do Paissandu, where we find the Monumento \u00e0 M\u00e3e Preta<\/i><\/em>, a 1955 work erected in homage to blacks. Its granite base has been painted and is covered by graffiti. The trail continues around the center of the city, passing the M\u00e1rio de Andrade Library, decorated with gray Mau\u00e1 marble; the Municipal Theatre, built on an Itaquera granite foundation with a fa\u00e7ade of Itarar\u00e9 sandstone quarried in the region of Iper\u00f3; and by City Hall, situated in the Matarazzo Building that is decorated with travertine marble imported from Italy. The last stop is Pra\u00e7a da S\u00e9, site of the neogothic cathedral that features different types of granite. Nearby is the marker for Kilometer Zero, a hexagonal marble structure carved in 1934 by French artist Jean Gabriel Villin.<\/p>\n

\"S\u00e3o

L\u00c9O RAMOS<\/span>S\u00e3o Bento Monastery: current fa\u00e7ade, from 1922, a combination of gray Itaquera and pink Itupeva graniteL\u00c9O RAMOS<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Granites from different regions of the state are the most common kinds of stone seen on buildings, monuments, and statues on the tour. Their colors range from black and shades of gray to dark green and the pinkish and reddish tones. All are of similar mineralogical composition: they are formed our of crystals of quartz, mica, feldspar and other minerals in very low concentrations\u2014it is feldspar that determines the color. S\u00e3o Paulo granites were formed between 600 and 580 million years ago by movements in the earth\u2019s crust that occurred more than 35 kilometers below the surface under high temperatures and pressures that were 6,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure, and formed the mountain ranges of Southeast Brazil. Those rocks can be seen in many parts of the state, such as in the Itu granitic formation\u2014a band 60 kilometers wide and 350 kilometers long in the interior of S\u00e3o Paulo State\u2014from which the Itupeva, Cap\u00e3o Bonito and Piracaia granites are quarried.<\/p>\n

The itinerary that Del Lama produced with Denise Bacci, Lucelene Martins, and Maria Motta Garcia from USP, and Lauro Dehiro from the S\u00e3o Paulo Institute for Technological Research (IPT) is not the first one ever devised. In 2006 Andr\u00e9 Stern and colleagues from USP and the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) proposed a walking tour through the streets of the old center of S\u00e3o Paulo that had fewer stops. Almost nonexistent in Brazil, such itineraries were inspired by the geology walks developed for London by geologist Eric Robinson in the 1980s. Prior to its introduction in S\u00e3o Paulo, walking tours were proposed for Curitiba and Rio de Janeiro. For Eliane Del Lama, development of the route reflects a change of course in her research. Having specialized in analyzing the chemical composition and geological evolution of rocks formed deep in the earth\u2019s crust, she decided to \u201cdo something different\u201d after being hired to teach at USP in 2004. It was a time when she did not have the equipment needed to conduct mineralogical analyses. She started walking around the center, taking pictures of historic monuments and assessing their state of conservation. That activity, initially unpretentious, led her to make more thorough analyses of the physical soundness of works that are part of the Paulistano imagery\u2014the best known being the Monumento \u00e0s Bandeiras<\/i><\/em> in Ibirapuera. This work led her to conclude that the public needs to be informed about the geology of the state capital to help curb the vandalism committed against its monuments. \u201cThe best way to preserve them,\u201d states Del Lama, \u201cis to teach people to like them, because people only preserve what they are familiar with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\nMineralogy Applied to the Study of Cultural Heritage (n\u00ba 2009\/02519-8<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/b><\/strong> Regular Research Grant; Principal Investigator<\/b><\/strong> Eliane Aparecida Del Lama (IGc-USP); Investment<\/b><\/strong> R$ 94.400,40 (FAPESP).<\/p>\n

Scientific article<\/em>
\nDEL LAMA, E.A. et al.<\/em> Urban geotourism and the old centre of S\u00e3o Paulo City, Brazil<\/a>. Geoheritage<\/b><\/strong>. V. 7, No. 2, pp. 147-64. June 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Itinerary with stone from a distant past in the historic center of S\u00e3o Paulo","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[226,240,241],"coauthors":[105],"class_list":["post-197241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-education","tag-geology","tag-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197241"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=197241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}