Costa Rica's highland capital — the casado lunch, Mercado Central, and a city that punches far above its size on museums, coffee culture, and cuisine
San José sits at 1,170m in the Central Valley, surrounded by volcanoes, and functions as the cultural and political centre of one of Latin America's most stable democracies. The city is usually treated as a transit stop for the national parks and beaches, which means most visitors miss a genuinely interesting urban food scene: the Mercado Central (a covered market of 200+ stalls selling Costa Rican produce, casado lunch plates, and every tropical fruit imaginable) is one of the best markets in Central America, and the city's coffee culture — built on Costa Rica's exceptional single-origin pro…
Founded in 1737 as Villa Nueva de la Boca del Monte, San José replaced Cartago as capital in 1823 after a short civil war, partly because it was better positioned to export the coffee that would finance 19th-century Costa Rican prosperity. The coffee oligarchy (known as the 'Generation of 1889') used coffee revenues to build the Teatro Nacional, establish public education, and develop what became one of the region's most educated and politically stable societies. Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948 — redirecting military spending to education and healthcare — a decision that has shaped the…