San Jose Audio Tours

San Jose sits at 1,030 metres in the Central Valley, which means it escapes the coastal heat that discourages exploration in so much of the region. Founded in 1736 and made capital in 1823, it is one of the youngest capital cities in Latin America, which may explain why it has always been more interested in the future than in preserving the past. The National Theater, completed in 1897 with Italian marble and lavish gilt detailing, was funded by a tax on coffee exports and remains the finest building the city ever produced.

Barrio Amon, the city's first planned residential neighbourhood, was developed by a French coffee entrepreneur at the end of the 19th century.

Its Belle Epoque mansions have been converted into boutique hotels and embassies and design studios, and walking those streets you catch the city's persistent instinct: to borrow European aesthetics and adapt them for somewhere entirely different. San Jose lacks traditional street names in most of its areas, so locals give directions by landmarks, some of them demolished decades ago, which makes the city genuinely disorienting but also compels you to pay attention.