San José became Costa Rica's capital three separate times
San José, Costa Rica's largest city and national capital in the Central Valley, concentrates government, commerce, and culture. Eighteenth-century orders from Cabildo de León gathered Aserrí Valley settlers in 1736, yet it lacked formal Spanish city government until the 1812 Cádiz Constitution enabled a council, with city status on 18 October 1813.
The town began in 1736 when the Cabildo de León set out to gather the scattered settlers of the Aserrí Valley in one place. A modest chapel went up at La Boca del Monte with help from the church in Cartago, and when it was finished a year later Saint Joseph became the parish patron, giving the town its name. Its growth followed a colonial plan unlike the classic Spanish foundations elsewhere in Central America.
With no founding decree, it had no council of its own until the Cádiz Constitution of 1812. A priest declared it a city in October 1813, but Ferdinand VII's annulment of the Cortes' acts stripped the title in 1814. Council and status returned in 1820, and in 1823 it became Costa Rica's capital, making it one of Latin America's younger capitals. Better water supply and a tobacco factory opened in 1782 had already brought money that let it outstrip neighbouring provinces.
The coffee boom left its mark in Barrio Amón, the first modern neighbourhood, built in the late nineteenth century in Belle Époque style and named for a French coffee businessman, and in the National Theatre. Costa Rica's first university, Santo Tomás, opened here in 1843; President Bernardo Soto closed it in 1888, and its surviving schools of law, agronomy, fine arts and pharmacy were rejoined in 1940 as the University of Costa Rica.
The canton counted about 352,000 residents in 2022, up from some 288,000 in 2011, with only 18 percent living in the four central districts. Temperatures barely change through the year, from about 22 °C in October to about 24 °C in April, while rainfall swings from almost nothing to over 350 millimetres a month.
Source: San José, Costa Rica
