San José · Centre · Morning
Teatro Nacional
A jewel-box theatre built on coffee money in the 1890s, all marble, gold leaf and painted ceilings, with a café in the foyer.
Opened 1897Tours hourlyFoyer café1–2 hours
Photo: Pexels
A jewel-box theatre built on coffee money in the 1890s, all marble, gold leaf and painted ceilings, with a café in the foyer.
The Teatro Nacional opened in 1897, paid for by a tax on coffee exports, when the coffee growers of the Central Valley wanted a stage worthy of the touring opera companies of Europe.
European architects and craftsmen gave it a neoclassical façade with statues, a marble staircase, gilded balconies and ceiling paintings. It's often compared to a miniature Paris Opéra.
The best-known painting, an allegory of coffee and bananas, shows the crops that built the country, and once appeared on a Costa Rican banknote. Guided tours run on the hour and take you into the auditorium and the grand salon.
The foyer café, Alma de Café, serves good Costa Rican coffee under the frescoes, and the Plaza de la Cultura outside, with the Gold Museum beneath it, is the city's main meeting place.
A morning in the centre.
Start in the Plaza de la Cultura to see the façade and its statues.
Buy a tour ticket in the foyer and look up at the painted ceilings.
The guide leads you into the gilded auditorium with its tiers of boxes.
Upstairs, see the mirrored salon and the famous coffee painting.
End with coffee and cake at the foyer café, then head below the plaza to the Gold Museum.
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On the Plaza de la Cultura in the centre, a short walk from Avenida Central.
Tours run on the hour from 9 to 4 for a few thousand colones; buy at the box office.
Tours may be cut short or cancelled on rehearsal or performance days.
San José practical notes →Photographs from Wikimedia Commons and Pexels under their licences.
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