National Museum of Costa Rica
Costa Rica's national museum in the former Bellavista Barracks, with Diquís stone spheres and a butterfly garden.
The museum was founded in 1887 and since 1950 has occupied the Cuartel Bellavista, a fortified brick barracks of 1917 that rises above the Plaza de la Democracia on the Cuesta de Moras. Its ochre walls and corner turrets still carry bullet marks from the civil war of 1948, and one battlement was deliberately broken by José Figueres when the army was abolished that December. The conversion from garrison to museum is itself interpreted in a gallery called De Cuartel a Museo.
Displays trace the isthmus from its earliest settlement to the present. Pre-Columbian rooms hold ceramics, gold work and several of the enigmatic stone spheres carved in the Diquís delta, while colonial and republican sections cover the coffee economy and the growth of San José. A glazed butterfly garden occupies part of the old parade ground, and the Casa del Comandante has been restored as a period interior. The museum has also received substantial returns of looted antiquities from abroad.
Highlights
- Diquís stone spheres, a UNESCO-listed pre-Columbian tradition
- Bullet-scarred turrets of the 1917 Bellavista Barracks
- Gallery on the 1948 abolition of the Costa Rican army
- Enclosed butterfly garden in the former parade ground
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