San José on a budget

Best free attractions

San José's free spaces are not show-pieces; they are the city's working living room — plazas where pensioners trade gossip, where students kill an hour between classes, where Sunday afternoons pool into civic life. Costa Rica's capital does not try to be a city of grand boulevards or monumental gardens; what you get instead is a patchwork of small public squares stitched into the city grid, each with its own register: cultural, political, judicial, neighbourhood. Skip the half-hearted attempts to tour San José like a European capital; the rewards here are smaller and closer to the ground. The 7 picks below sit mostly within easy reach of the city core, with two outliers — Parque de Curridabat and Juan Santamaría Park in Alajuela — for visitors with a reason to leave the centre. None charge admission. Most are best in the cooler half of the day, before the afternoon sun drives even the locals indoors. Bring sturdy shoes, small change for vendors, and the willingness to sit on a bench and watch a place reveal itself. That is the trick to walking San José: don't pass through the plazas, stop in them.