San José

San José was founded in 1736 by order of the cabildo of León to gather the scattered inhabitants of the Aserrí valley. Unlike nearby Cartago, the colonial capital, it was not founded by formal decree and had no town council of its own. Growth came with better water supply and above all the state Tobacco Factory, set up in 1782, whose profits let the town overtake its neighbours. Its town council and city title were restored in 1820, and after independence it became the capital in 1823, which makes it one of the younger capital cities of Latin America.

Coffee transformed it in the 19th century. Export wealth paid for the National Theatre, which opened in 1897 with a performance of Faust. The French entrepreneur Amon Fasileau-Duplantier developed Barrio Amón, the city's first elegant suburb, and the two remain symbols of the coffee golden age. In 1948 the city was at the centre of the civil war; on 1 December that year José Figueres symbolically abolished the army at the Bellavista barracks, which since 1950 have housed the National Museum.

In the 20th century San José spread across the valley floor and merged with Alajuela, Heredia, Cartago and the suburbs between them into a single metropolitan area. La Sabana, once the site of the city's airport, is now its largest park, and a new National Stadium opened there in 2011. The city joined UNESCO's network of learning cities in 2016 and is also recognised by UNESCO as a city of design.

San José is the country's cultural capital. The National Theatre and the Melico Salazar Theatre stage concerts, dance and drama through the year, the Teatro Variedades of 1892 is the city's oldest theatre, and the national museums of history, gold, jade and art all lie within a short distance of one another. The University of Costa Rica in San Pedro gives the eastern districts a student life of bars, bookshops and cheap restaurants, and its Semana Universitaria in late April fills the campus with concerts and shows.

Football is the city's great passion. Deportivo Saprissa, the capital's biggest club with a record number of league titles, plays in the northern suburb of Tibás, the club Universidad plays at the Estadio Ecológico, and the national team plays at the stadium in La Sabana, the park that josefinos — the people of San José — call the lungs of their city.

December is the city's festival month. The Festival de la Luz opens the Christmas season with a night parade of floats, masked dancers and fireworks; the Tope Nacional on 26 December brings thousands of horses and riders along Paseo Colón; and the fair at Zapote runs through the end of the year with fairground rides and rodeo shows. Courtesy matters: people greet one another before getting to business, use the formal usted widely, and answer most things with pura vida.

The canton of San José had an estimated 352,381 people in 2022, and the Greater Metropolitan Area that joins it to Alajuela, Heredia and Cartago had more than two million in 2017. Only about a fifth of the canton's residents live in the four central districts; most live in the outer districts such as Pavas, Hatillo and San Sebastián, or in suburbs beyond the city limits. More than a million people pass through the city every day, many of them commuting into the centre by bus.

As the seat of government, the capital holds the ministries, the Legislative Assembly, the courts, the banks and most embassies, alongside the universities and hospitals. Many josefinos work in offices and services.

The day starts early, with coffee and gallo pinto before work, and traffic builds quickly in the morning and evening rush. Downtown is busy with shoppers and office workers by day and empties after dark, when nightlife moves to Escalante, La California and San Pedro. Traffic, the cost of housing and rising crime in some districts are the everyday complaints; the homicide rate has risen in recent years, mostly linked to drug gangs in poorer areas away from the tourist centre.

Josefino eating is the national cooking at its most everyday. Breakfast is gallo pinto — rice and black beans — with tortillas and natilla, a thin sour cream, and lunch is a casado: rice, beans, salad, fried plantain and meat, eaten at sodas, the small family-run diners found on every block. Olla de carne, a beef soup with root vegetables, and chifrijo, beans with fried pork (chicharrón), are bar and family favourites.

The Central Market, open since 1880, is the best place to eat like a local, with counter sodas serving casados and soups among stalls of coffee, herbs and fruit; it is also known for helado de sorbetera, a cinnamon-flavoured ice cream. Two blocks north, the Mercado Borbón is the food market, with butchers, fishmongers and fruit sellers. Ceviche, small pieces of raw fish cured in lime juice, is sold at market counters and bars across the city.

For eating out, Barrio Escalante has the city's best-known cluster of restaurants and cafés, and San Pedro's student streets have cheap places to eat. Coffee is the city's pride, often brewed through a cloth chorreador, and tropical fruit is blended with water or milk into frescos.