Limón

Limón, also known as Puerto Limón, is the capital city of both the province and canton of the same name. One of Costa Rica's seven "middle cities", Limón has a population of 100,532, which made it, as of 2025, the most-populous city in the country outside of the Greater Metropolitan Area and the second most-populous district in the nation.
Founded in 1854 by Philipp J. J. Valentini and officially established as a district in 1870 during the Liberal State, Limón is the only planned city in the country built in the 19th century. Located in the Caribbean coast, its purpose was to become the country's main port, a role the city still retains to this day, given its strategic location in the Caribbean Sea, close to the Panama Canal, to connect Costa Rica with North America, South America, the Caribbean, and Europe. The Moín Container Terminal, operated by Dutch-based APM Terminals, and the nearby Port of Moín, operated by the state-institution JAPDEVA, serve as the main economic ports for the country. The Port of Limón, located just South downtown, receives both cargo and cruise ships, though plans to convert it into a passenger terminal are underway.
The city is of historical significance for the country, as it was one of Christopher Columbus' moorings during his fourth and last voyage. On 25 September 1502, Colón recalls landing on a town named by the locals as Cariay, with the nearby Quiribrí island just offshore.
Today, Limón is recognized as one of Costa Rica's most culturally and racially diverse cities. It is one of the main communities of Afro-Costa Ricans in the country, mainly as a result of people of Jamaican descent arriving for the construction of the Atlantic railroad in the country, and a subsequent travel ban from the central government, which limited people of Afro-Caribbean origin to move outside of the Limón Province. Aside from Spanish, the Afro-Costa Rican community also speaks the English-based Limonese Creole.
Limón faces numerous problems, with the main one being the skyrocketing crime, as drug cartels confluence in the city due to its port being an important part of their drug-trafficking schemes, resulting in an alarming murder rate.

Toponymy

Puerto Limón is Spanish for port lemon. The city is homonymous to both the canton and province. Along with Guanacaste, Limón is one of the locations in the country that owes its name to a plant.
A previous name for the location was Cariay or Cariai, a name used by the aboriginal tribes from pre-Hispanic era up to the arrival of Christopher Columbus.
The origins of the name Limón are unknown, but by 1852, then-Costa Rican president Juan Rafael Mora Porras referred to the port as Puerto del Limón.

History

Colony

first dropped anchor in Costa Rica in 1502 at Isla Uvita, just off the coast of Puerto Limón. The Atlantic coast, however, was left largely unexplored by Spanish settlers until the 19th century.
As early as 1569, Governor Perafán de Rivera gave extensive plots of land, Indians included, in Matina to aristocrats that helped to finance and support early conquest. Because these aristocrats found out that only a few Indians were available to exploit, they acquired African slaves to plant these lands with cocoa trees. These lands provided the only source of income to the absentee owners from the capital city of Cartago. Matina gained importance because of the cacao and the presence of African slaves, which made them attractive to pirate incursions. The Spanish left Costa Rica soon after arriving because of Costa Rica's lack of natural resources and isolation from the rest of the major colonial trade routes.
Notorious pirates, Edward Mansvelt and his vice admiral Henry Morgan, arrived at Portete, a small bay between Limón and Moín, in 1666. They proceeded inland to Cartago, the capital of Costa Rica at the time, but were driven away by the inhabitants at Turrialba on15 April. The pirate army left on16 April and arrived back in Portete on23 April. They left Costa Rica and did not return.

Foundation

The town was officially founded in 1854 by Philipp J. J. Valentini under government auspices.
In 1867, construction began on an ambitious railroad connecting the highlands to the sea. Limón was chosen as the site of a major port, which would facilitate exports of coffee from the Central Valley.

Recent history

During World War II, as part of the Operation Neuland, German U-boat attacked San Pablo, a ship that was being unloaded in Limón, on 3 July 1942. The attack killed twenty-three dockers and one crew member, whose bodies took around three weeks to be recovered.
As a district, Limón was last modified on10 August 1992, by Executive Decree 21515-G.
Puerto Limón was heavily struck by the 1991 Limon earthquake, whose epicenter was located in the neighboring Valle La Estrella district. It elevated the coastline by around 1.85 meters in some areas of Limón, cracked the streets open, and destroyed many buildings, most notably the Las Olas Hotel, located in the northern shore of the city.

Geography

Limón is situated on a cape along the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, on the East side of the country. South of the National Route 32, two rivers converge into their drainage into the Caribbean Sea: the Limoncito and the Cieneguita rivers, both of which are surrounded by numerous neighborhoods.
Two islands surround the city. The Uvita Island is less than a kilometer East of downtown Limón, while the smaller Isla de Pájaros lies just north of the nearby Bonita Beach.
The district has an area of and an elevation of

Locations

Limón is divided into neighborhoods and villages.
The barrios are as follows:

The poblados are as follows:

Climate

Limón features a trade wind tropical rainforest climate under Köppen's climate classification. Average temperatures are relatively consistent throughout the year averaging around. Common to all cities with this climate, Limón has no consistently dry season. Its driest month averages roughly of rainfall while its wettest averages just below of rain. Limón averages nearly of rainfall annually.

Demographics

Afro-Costa Ricans

The first officially acknowledged arrival of African people who arrived in Costa Rica came with the Spanish conquistadors. Slave trading was common in all the countries conquered by Spain, and in Costa Rica, the first Africans seem to have come from specific sources in Africa Equatorial and Western regions. The people from these areas were thought of as ideal slaves because they had a reputation for being more robust, affable, and hard-working than other Africans. The enslaved were from what is now the Gambia, Guinea, Ghanaian, Benin, and Sudan. Many of the enslaved were also Minas, Popo, Yorubas and Congas. Enslaved Africans also came from other places, such as neighboring Panama. Throughout the centuries, but especially after the emancipation of the slaves in 1824, the black population mixed with other ethnic groups, notably the Indians, and became part of the mainstream culture and ethnicity.
The early black population of Matina and Suerre in Limón is not the same population that arrived in the second half of the 19th century. This latter population did not arrive as slaves but as hired workers from Jamaica, and smaller groups from Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. This is the reason why the majority of the current black population of Costa Rica has English surnames and speaks English with a Jamaican accent.
In 1910, Marcus Mosiah Garvey travelled to Puerto Limón, where he worked as a time-keeper for the United Fruit Company for some months, observing that the population of African descent suffered poor conditions.
The descendants of Africans in Costa Rica have endured discrimination including a delay in voting rights and a restriction on their movements.

Notable people

Education

Primary and secondary schools

In 1877, after the city foundation, then-Costa Rican president Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez ordered the construction of a primary school, the Men's Higher School Institute. It was then renewed in further decades and renamed after Guardia. A women's school, named after Rafael Iglesias Castro, was inaugurated in 1922.
The first secondary school was inaugurated in 1945, the Colegio de Limón, eventually renamed Colegio de Limón Diurno to differentiate it from other high schools that appeared in later decades, particularly the Colegio Nocturno de Limón, which uses the same campus as the Day School but has a different administration. Those schools include the Colegio Técnico Profesional de Limón, the Liceo Nuevo de Limón, eventually renamed Liceo Mario Bourne after its founder and first principal, the Colegio Deportivo de Limón, and the Colegio de Pacuare, named after the neighborhood it is located in.
Limón's public education schools often struggle due to poor infrastructure and low public support. The Limón Sports School is a primary example of this, as the school abandoned its previous installations in the Pacuare neighborhood and moved to Limón's New Stadium or JAPDEVA's installations in downtown Limón.
In 2002, the Scientific High School of Limón was inaugurated, and has since been run by the Distance State University at the local campus.

Higher education

Limón is home to numerous universities. Out of the five public universities in the country, three have a campus in Limón: the University of Costa Rica and the Distance State University have their campuses along Route 32, while the Costa Rica Institute of Technology is located downtown, in front of the Limón Day School.
Another institution is the University College of Limón, a public-funded, semi-autonomous university founded in 2002.
Moreover, some private universities also have a building in Limón, namely the Autonomous University of Central America, the Castro Carazo University, and the Free University of Costa Rica.