The National Museum, Part 1

Saturday, July 28, 2012

El museo nacional de Costa Rica (National Musem) is definitely worth seeing should you find yourself in San Jose, Costa Rica. It is housed in the old Bellavista Fortress, which was built in 1917 and served as an army barracks. During the civil war of 1948 fighting took place there and one can still see the bullet holes in the turrets.

On the right is one of the turrets from the old fortress. If you look closely you can see the bullet holes on it.

Outside the entrance to the museum is the first of many Pre-Columbian spheres that you will see throughout the museum. It is housed within a large glass sphere. These spheres are from southwestern Costa Rica and are believed to have been made from 300 A.D. to just before the Spanish arrival. They range in size from a few inches to over 8 feet in diameter. The one in the picture below seemed to be about 5 feet in diameter. The glass sphere around it is huge!

Pre-Columbian sphere within a more modern glass sphere.



More spheres!

After paying for tickets to enter the museum ($8 foreigners/about $3 for Costa Ricans), we entered a butterfly garden. The garden is charming and instantly brought me a feeling of peace, contentment, and joy. Maybe it is the lush green environment or maybe all the oxygen the plants are producing, but I felt that I hadn't a care in the world. Since it was raining, we had to look very carefully to see the butterflies. They found places to stay out of the rain and once I saw one, then two, it was much easier to see where they liked to hang out.

After passing through the butterfly garden we exited to a central courtyard that was really like a small park. I saw a cacao tree with a pod on it. It was nice to see the source of my favorite drug (chocolate)! The rest of the museum consisted of buildings around this courtyard.

Next, we went into the old barracks of the fort. We saw the jail cells, the showers, the latrine and looked at photos and read about the history of the fort. Most of the descriptive signs were written in both Spanish and English, which came in handy because there were a lot of technical terms used.

From the barracks, we went to a Pre-Columbian exhibit that was just incredible. While Costa Rica does not have the pyramids and ruins that Mexico, Guatemala, Peru and other countries have, the artifacts that have been excavated are fantastic. Here are some photos:





These are called metates and were used to cover bodies in a tomb.