Pre-Columbian Gold MuseumMuseo del Oro Precolombino

Set beneath San Jose’s Plaza de la Cultura, the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum traces indigenous life before and through early contact. Diquís works (700–1500) present gold less as wealth than as a potent sign of rank, alliance, and sacred authority, hammered into disks and hybrid animal-human forms. By connecting river gold to ritual regalia—and to the stone-sphere world of Diquís society—the museum brings a foundational past back into view.