Top 3 Museums located in San Jose you must visit
These are the museums that travelers from around the world prefer when visiting San Jose, Costa Rica. Another way to get to know it’s culture and beauty, besides it’s colorful beaches and breathtaking mountains.
Here is our top 3 of the museums you should take a look at
3. The Museum of Pre-Columbian Gold
In Spanish, Museo de Oro Precolombino, gathers the history of Costa Rica in a collection of more than 1600 artifacts of the Precolumbinan era heading back AD 500 . The collection includes Costa Rica’s first coin, the Media Escudo, several animal like figurines, amulets, earrings, erotic statuettes and El Guerrero a life sized gold warrior figure adorned with gold ornaments in a glass case.
In Costa Rican history, gold was considered a symbol of authority and the items are testament to the craftmanship of the Pre-Columbian period.
2. Museo del Jade “Marco Fidel Tristán Castro”
This archeological place is a “must” when it comes to enrichment of Costa Rican past civilizations. The museum has an extensive collection of Precolumbinan objects such as stone tables(known as metates), ceramics, ceremonial heads, adzes, and other decorative pieces from 500 BC to 800AD.
With it’s recent modernization of the location, the museum also displays translucent jade pendants. While the visitors can enjoy in a very detailed way important aspects of the ancient Costa Rica in their modern and interactive rooms.
1. The National Museum
El Museo Nacional comes in our #1 pick because of it’s wide spaces that tell the visitors every aspect of Costa Rica’s culture since the ancient times till today’s civilization.
An interesting thing about this museum is the building itself that used to be a fortress back in 1917. Even the exterior walls still have many bullets lodged in them from the country’s 1948 civil war. It was until 1950 that became the site of the museum.
The museum is organized thematically in a counter clockwise direction from the entrance with artifacts related to Costa Rica’s geological, colonial, archaeological, religious and modern history.
The National Museum also has an exhibition dedicated to the Noble Peace Awarded and former president, Oscar Arias Sanchez, and a mesmerizing butterfly garden.
There you go, a great way to have a good time in San Jose and also as a way of cultural enrichment. What else would you like to do at the capitol? Is there another museum that should be on this list? Let us know in the comments.
