The flag of Costa Rica is attractive both in its graphic simplicity and in its wealth of symbolic meaning. Adopted in 1848, the flag’s three colors allude to those of the French flag, a symbolic recognition of the ideals of the French Revolution.

A Costa Rican government decree of 1848 provides the first official description of the flag—a “tricolor” made up of five horizontal bands. The central red band is flanked by two white bands, which, in turn, are flanked by two blue ones. Each band takes up one sixth of the flag’s width, except for the red band, which is two-sixths of the width.

Each of the flag’s colors has its own meaning. The blue stripes represent the blue of the sky and, by extension, purity and tranquility. The white stripes represent peace, an ideal of particular importance to a country with no army. The red represents the blood shed by those who fought for Costa Rica’s independence, although it has also come to symbolize the blood pulsing through the veins of the people and the reddened faces of Costa Rica’s hard-working laborers.

The unadorned red-white-and-blue flag serves for unofficial purposes. For official state and maritime purposes, Costa Rica flies the Pabellón Nacional. This flag has the same five horizontal stripes but also includes the country’s coat of arms, or escudo. The escudo floats on a white elliptical background, whose dimensions are also specified in the 1848 governmental decree. The white ellipse sits on the flag’s broad red band.

Costa Rica’s flag, whether in its official or its unofficial purpose, is a great source of national pride for its people.

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The Hotel Sleep Inn San Jose Downtown is the place for lovers of precolombian art. Within a short walking distance of the hotel is Costa Rica’s renowned Museo de Jade, which is the largest museum collection of jade in the Americas and which contains some of the country’s most valuable and interesting pieces of precolombian jade.

Located in the high-rise national insurance building (El Instituto Nacional de Seguros, or INS) just across the park from the Sleep Inn, the museum is open from Monday through Saturday. Its five-gallery exhibition space traces the origin of jade-work in the country and presents each piece in its historic and archaeological context. Jade, as a material, had particular cultural and religious significance to the native population of Costa Rica. The origins of each of the pieces—many of which were acquired through trade—are often as interesting as the pieces themselves.

The Jade Museum also features works in ceramic, gold, wood and bone. Guided tours are available in both Spanish and English.

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