San Jose

San Jose is the capital and more the big city of the Costa Rica. It is also the capital of the province of San Jose. It counts 339.588 inhabitants and 1.611.616 in the agglomeration (2006).

Geography

The city is located at the center of the country, on the plate of the Central Vallée. It is distant of 130 kilometers Puerto Limón on the coast caribéenne and 115 kilometers Puntarenas on the peaceful coast.

History

Currency and heraldic

The currency of San Jose, which is reproduced on her blazon, is AD melioram , literally meaning At best , or Towards progress .

The blazon is composed of one ecu with a money star on field of azure, evoking the first armorial bearings of Costa Rica, and a red edge so that the ecu comprises the three national colors. External ornaments appear under the ecu: two fruit coffee branches interlaced recalling that San Jose was the cradle of this culture. In top, a gold currency where figure AD melioram in letters of azure, indicating the progressist spirit of the city.

XVIIIe century

The first permanent establishment with the site of San Jose was done in 1737 under the name of Boca del Monte of Curridabá .

XIXe century

San Jose becomes the capital of Costa Rica in 1823. Indeed, Cartago, which was hitherto the capital, had given its support for an adhesion to the Mexican Empire preached by the general Iturbide and it is thus logically that it was relieved of its statute after the victory of the freedom fighters in 1823, at the side of which San Jose had lined up.

XXe century

Culture and inheritance

Museums

Museum of the Gold: it constitutes certainly one of the most beautiful jewels of the Latin America with those of Bogota in Colombia and of Lima to the Peru.

Museum of Jade: it constitutes the largest collection of Jade précolombienne of the American continent.

National museum: one finds there, a room devoted to the Costa Rican civilization which tells the history of the country. A room which pays homage to the Nobel Prize of Peace received by President Oscar Arias Sanchez in 1987. The museum contains also many parts of sacred art, objects précolombiens, it is the memory of the country.

Civil buildings

Esmeralda with San Jose, is the place where the men come to seek the trios or the mariachis to give the serenade to their wife or been engaged. As from 11 p.m. you can benefit from the music played by the trios which await the customers. Environment is cordial and alcohol runs with flood until the small hour.

the National theater is probably the building whose Costa Rican ones are proudest and this room, largest of the country, sees to do without all the most important events there the nation. It was inaugurated in 1897, because 7 years earlier large and celebrates professional singer due to give up giving a representation fault of a suitable place. Restored after the terrible earthquake of 1992, it is as beautiful today as in 1897.

Religious buildings

Cathedral ( Catedrál Metropolitana')

Church of the Grace ( Iglesia Merced )

Church of Loneliness ( Iglesia Soledad )

Others

Among the districts of San Jose, Barrio Amon is one of oldest. Barrio Otoya is also one of oldest, one can see in the zoological gardens Simon Bolivar of splendid trees centenaries.

Central Mercado and Mercado Borbon, beside an infinity of fruit and vegetables, one also finds objects out of leather and statuettes out of wooden.

Twinning

The town of San Jose is twinned with:

External bond

site of the municipality.
Of the images on San Jose

Be-X-old: Сан-Хасэ (Коста-Рыка, сталіца)

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