San José hides its culture indoors: a bank basement holding 1,600 pre-Columbian gold pieces, the world's largest jade collection, and a national art museum inside the old airport terminal. Above ground, Chepe's murals do the talking.
Five floors holding the world's largest collection of pre-Columbian jade — some 7,000 pieces, including axe-god pendants carved before 300 BCE. The 2014 Cañas-designed building itself is a folded concrete cube. Open daily 09:00–17:00.
Underground beneath Plaza de la Cultura, three subterranean levels of the Banco Central vault hold 1,600+ gold objects — frog pendants, shamans, eagle discs — plus a numismatic museum. Open daily 09:15–16:30.
Housed in the 1940 terminal of San José's old international airport at the east entrance of Parque La Sabana. Costa Rican painting and sculpture from the 19th century onward; the upstairs Salón Dorado is a carved stucco mural of national history.
East of Barrio Amón, Otoya keeps San José's eclectic 1900s villas: the Casa Amarilla (Costa Rica's foreign ministry, a 1912 Carnegie-funded neoclassical block) and the ceiba tree planted by JFK in 1963 in its garden.
The 1928 sister theatre to the Teatro Nacional, on Avenida 2 facing Parque Central. 1,000+ seats, a neoclassical facade, and the home stage of the Compañía Nacional de Danza and Costa Rica's popular-theatre programming.
The former National Liquor Factory (Fábrica Nacional de Licores, 1856) now houses the Culture Ministry, the Teatro 1887 and the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo across brick warehouses and open patios in Barrio Otoya.
Costa Rica's leading contemporary art institution, inside CENAC's old distillery halls. Rotating shows of Central American and Caribbean artists, design, video and installation. Open Tuesday–Saturday 09:30–17:00.
Barrio Escalante's live-music room on Calle 33, running nightly sets of Costa Rican jazz, son, ska and rock. Doors from around 19:00, main act typically 21:00; the space is small enough that the horn section is three metres away.
The 1909 Central Penitentiary, converted in 1994. Cell blocks now hold interactive science rooms plus the Galería Nacional's contemporary art wing — original bars, iron doors and prison corridors left intact around the exhibits.
Borbón is the working produce market feeding the city, four blocks west of the centre, unpolished and loud. Nearby the Paseo de los Estudiantes (Calle 9) is San José's Chinatown-adjacent restaurant strip of family-run sodas.
A 40-minute bus from San José's Terminal Cartago. The 1926 Byzantine-Baroque basilica houses La Negrita, the black stone Virgin found in 1635 — Costa Rica's patron saint and the endpoint of the August 2 romería pilgrimage.
Escalante's side streets carry commissioned murals and street art across garage doors and gable walls, layered over 1940s houses now converted into cafés, craft-beer bars and independent bookshops along Paseo Gastronómico La Luz.