UNESCO World Heritage for Costa Rica

UNESCO World Heritage Sites represent some of the best natural, cultural and historic attractions in world travel. Below are details of the 4 cultural, natural and mixed sites inscribed for Costa Rica to date (a red World Heritage symbol denotes a site currently regarded as endangered). For more details of these properties, click on the links to the UNESCO website and the photographic galleries of these sites from OurPlace (where available) or see our highlights of Costa Rica for descriptions. Also, check out UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage for Costa Rica below.


1983 - Talamanca Range-La Amistad Reserves / La Amistad National Park
1997 - Cocos Island National Park
1999 - Area de Conservación Guanacaste
2014 - Precolumbian Chiefdom Settlements with Stone Spheres of the Diquís


Intangible Cultural Heritage

Recently UNESCO has begun to document the world's Intangible Cultural Heritage which includes "traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts". The current listings for Costa Rica are shown below - click on the links for more details.


Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

2008 - Oxherding and oxcart traditions in Costa Rica