San Jose

San Jose is one of the seven provinces of Costa Rica and the home of the national capital, the city of San Jose. It lies in the middle of the country: the capital sits in the Central Valley, and the province reaches south, beyond the mountains, to the canton of Perez Zeledon.

The city grew from a chapel built in the 1730s and became the capital of Costa Rica in 1823, replacing Cartago. In the 1840s it became one of the important centres of coffee production, and coffee helped pay for its best-known building: the Teatro Nacional, opened in October 1897 and funded in part by a levy on coffee exports.

San Jose was also early to electric light. On 9 August 1884 the city inaugurated public electric street lighting, powered by a hydroelectric plant in Aranjuez, and became one of the first capitals in the world to be lit by electricity.

Much of the country's history is a short walk apart in the centre. The Museo Nacional has occupied the former Bellavista barracks since 1949; it was there, on 1 December 1948, that Costa Rica abolished its army. The Museo del Oro Precolombino lies beneath the Plaza de la Cultura, the Museo del Jade holds the largest collection of pre-Columbian jade in the Americas, and the Mercado Central, founded in 1880, is the city's largest market.

Beyond the city the province turns to coffee and mountains. The Los Santos coffee region takes its name from the saints in the names of its cantons, among them San Marcos de Tarrazu and Santa Maria de Dota. In the south, near San Gerardo de Rivas in Perez Zeledon, Chirripo National Park climbs to Cerro Chirripo, at about 3,820 metres the highest point in Costa Rica.