Cartago was the capital of Costa Rica for nearly three hundred years, until San José took the role in 1823, and earthquakes have taken most of what it built: the Santiago Apóstol parish church, levelled in 1910 and never rebuilt, stands roofless in the middle of town as a garden.
The reason to come is the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles, a Byzantine-looking basilica housing La Negrita, a small black stone figure of the Virgin found here in 1635 and the patron of Costa Rica. On the night of 1 August every year, somewhere over a million people — a fifth of the country — walk to it from San José and beyond, a twenty-two-kilometre pilgrimage called the romería.
The town is twenty-five minutes from San José and is the base for Irazú and the Orosi valley.