Costa Rica's National Theatre - Teatro Nacional

One hundred years have gone by since the first stones were placed for what is today a major item of Costa Rican pride and joy.

These foundations symbolically embody a growing. Today, in the middle of the centenary celebrations of the Teatro Nacional the same pride and magnificence remains untouched by time.

As in a creative process that produces a masterpiece once all the right elements are joined, the National Theater became, for turn-of-the-century Costa Ricans, the missing piece that made all the parts of their cultural experience come to life. With dances and dinners in which ladies and gentlemen chatted and admired paintings and sculptures, this coliseum of art crowned the lights and magnificence of the capital city of San José. Costa Rica celebrated the opening of their long-awaited theater, just as current-day Costa Ricans delighted when restorations were finished after the theater was damaged by seismic activity in 1990.

The National Theater is the main arena for history, legends and memories that have been mingling long after the first spectators crowded the beautifully decorated hall. To the rise and fall of the theater's curtain, Costa Rica experienced many of its major changes, immersing the National Theater in the chronicles of its people.