The Pre-Columbian Gold Museum

Beneath the plaza in front of the Teatro Nacional, three floors underground hold the national gold collection: around sixteen hundred objects made between roughly the fifth century and the arrival of the Spanish, most of them from the south of the country where the Diquís culture worked gold with a skill that startles anyone who has assumed pre-Columbian metallurgy was crude. Frogs, eagles, shamanic figures and animal hybrids were cast by the lost wax method in gold alloyed with copper. The museum sets them in context with an ethnographic floor on the peoples who made them, and a numismatic collection covers the country's currency since the colonial period.

What you actually see

• The Diquís goldwork - frogs, eagles and shaman figures in cast gold.
• Lost wax casting - the technique explained alongside the objects.
• The ethnographic floor - the societies the goldsmiths worked in.
• The coin collection - Costa Rican currency from the colonial era on.

When to go

Year-round; open daily. Mornings are quietest and the underground galleries are cool at any hour. Allow two hours. The plaza above is the centre of San José and worth ten minutes for the pigeons and the buskers.

Honest expectations

It is underground and windowless, which some find oppressive. The gold objects are small and the cases are dense, so it rewards taking time rather than skimming. Labels are bilingual but the ethnographic section is thinner than the goldwork deserves. The plaza above is a known spot for pickpockets and touts.

Nearby

The Teatro Nacional is directly above; the jade museum is five minutes east.