San José

San José is the capital of Costa Rica, in the Central Valley of the country among volcanic mountains. It was among the first cities in the Americas to light its streets with electric lamps, switched on in the 1880s.

The town grew from a parish hermitage founded in 1738 as Villa Nueva de la Boca del Monte, and settlers soon named it after Saint Joseph. After independence from Spain it took over from Cartago as the capital in the 1820s. Coffee grown on the slopes of the Central Valley brought wealth in the 19th century, and the export trade paid for wide avenues and stone buildings in the city center. Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948, and the Bellavista barracks were turned into the National Museum, its corner turrets still standing on the hill above the center.

Galletas Pozuelo, based in the La Uruca district, bakes crackers and biscuits sold across Central America. The Central Market, a covered market of narrow lanes opened in the 1880s, sells coffee beans, spices, cheese and leather goods. Coffee from the Tarrazú and Central Valley regions is roasted in the city for export and for the cafés of the country.

The National Theatre, paid for by a tax on coffee exports and opened in the 1890s, has a marble staircase and ceiling paintings of coffee and banana harvests. The Pre-Columbian Gold Museum lies beneath the Plaza de la Cultura and shows frogs, birds and other animals cast in gold by the peoples of the region. Barrio Amón keeps the wooden and brick mansions of the coffee growers, painted in bright colors, from the turn of the 20th century.