Museums in Costa Rica

Costa Rica museums have inherited a rich and diverse cultural heritage, tangible and intangible, whose purpose is to display and educate present and future generations about our past and present.

The most notable collections include gold, jade, pre-Colombian ceramics and stone pieces, colonial religious art, contemporary art, and natural history.

Costa Rica possesses an important group of museums dedicated to collecting, preserving, and displaying the cultural heritage, and imparting our values. They are located throughout the country and uphold the legacy, which reflects the contributions of the indigenous, Afro-Costa Rican, Asian, European, and Central American populations.

The museums go beyond just collecting, by categorizing and searching for meaning of the past and the present in a didactic way. This allows Costa Ricans to face the future with a sense of identity, community, importance and a complete concept of sustainable human development. In addition, it gives foreign visitors a first-hand look at the towns of yesterday and today that make up our country.

At the end of the last century, a movement arose among some towns to have their own museums. This number of towns has increased.

These are known as community museums and reflect the will of the communities to recover, preserve, share, and communicate the importance of their cultural aspects, whether they be traditions, customs, or local folklore.

These museums have arisen in small towns with a large cultural mix and a rich history and that have shown their commitment to recovery, revitalization and sharing of their traditions, as well as the improvement in the quality of life of its inhabitants.

The most notable community museums are the Abangares Mines museum, the Indigenous Boruca museum, and the Chortega Ceramics museum in San Vicente, Nicoya. These museums are educational, respresentative, and integrating tools within the community, with the goal that the cultural and natural heritage of the local area be respected, valued, and admired as a product of social history to be shared with visitors.