Costa Rica has no pyramids and no conquistador cathedrals — its history is stranger than that. Three days tracing chiefdom goldwork, coffee-oligarchy mansions, a president who abolished the army, and the graves of the men who built the republic.
Five floors holding the world's largest collection of pre-Columbian jade — 7,000+ pieces, including axe-god pendants traded from Guatemala's Motagua valley between 500 BC and AD 700. Open daily 08:30–17:00; the ceramics floor upstairs is quieter.
Operating since 1936 on the corner facing Parque La Sabana — the airport's old terrain until 1955. A casado with picadillo de arracache runs about ₡4,500; the churchill dessert and the retro neon sign have barely changed in six decades.
Buried three storeys beneath Plaza de la Cultura: 1,600 gold objects from the Diquís chiefdoms, cast by lost-wax from AD 500 onward. The numismatic hall traces currency from cacao beans through the 1896 gold-standard colón.
Named for Francisco Morazán, the Honduran federalist executed by firing squad here in 1842. The domed 1920 Templo de la Música copies Paris's Trianon bandstand and marks the southern edge of the coffee-barons' quarter.
The 1917 military barracks whose turrets still carry 1948 civil-war bullet holes. In the courtyard is the wall President Figueres sledgehammered on 1 December 1948 when he abolished the army; inside, colonial and republican halls plus a butterfly garden.
Built in 1989 for the hemispheric summit marking a century of Costa Rican democracy, and to honour Óscar Arias's 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for the Esquipulas accords. The stepped concrete terraces face the old barracks deliberately.
The 1912 Castillo Azul was built as a private mansion, seized as a presidential residence, then housed the US legation. Beside it the 2020 legislative tower replaced the old Casa Rosada. Free ID-check tours of the plenary chamber run weekday mornings.
Cast in Rodin's Paris foundry in 1892 and unveiled in 1895: five female figures, one per Central American republic, driving out the filibuster William Walker after the 1856–57 campaign. Juan Santamaría's statue stands at the base.
Opened 1845 on Avenida 10, holding the mausoleums of nearly every president and coffee baron of the republic — Tomás Guardia, Cleto González Víquez, the Tinoco brothers' family vault. Marble angels shipped from Carrara line the central avenue.
The 1908 terminus of the Atlantic railway that killed roughly 4,000 workers — many Jamaican and Chinese labourers — building 160 km to Limón between 1871 and 1890. Minor Keith's line birthed the banana trade and United Fruit.
The 1920 Casa Amarilla was funded by Andrew Carnegie for the Central American Court of Justice, the world's first permanent international tribunal, and now holds the foreign ministry. The ceiba in its garden was planted by JFK in 1963.
Forty minutes east by bus from Calle 13: the 1926 Byzantine basilica over the rock where an indigenous girl reportedly found the Virgin statue in 1635. Every 2 August, a million pilgrims walk the 22 km from San José on the Romería.