Metropolitan Cathedral: rebuilt so many times by earthquakes that workers found a forgotten colonial cemetery while repairing it in 1990

In San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, the Spanish crown granted the city the title of villa in 1813, with the duty to build a temple fitting its new rank. The building, begun in 1825 under the architect Eusebio Rodriguez, was inaugurated in 1827 and raised to cathedral in 1850, when Monsignor Anselmo Llorente y La Fuente became the first bishop of Costa Rica. Damaged over time by several earthquakes that the sources do not name individually, the building was assessed in 1871 by the architect Jose Quirce and the carpenter Manuel Conejo, who recommended replacing the roof, then of cane, clay and wood. The rebuilding, begun under the direction of Bishop Llorente himself, who died in September of that same year, went on under the priest Domingo Rivas Salvatierra and was substantially completed between 1877 and 1878 by the Guatemalan carpenter Ramon Estrada, who made the dome, the pulpit, the choir and the details of the columns. The building seen today corresponds largely to that reconstruction. A later earthquake, in 1879, damaged the masonry bell towers, which were replaced with metal towers made in Europe. According to a source not fully verified, an earthquake of 1888 in the Fraijanes area destroyed them again. The earthquakes of 1990 and 1991 seriously damaged the structure, leading to a strengthening with new towers of reinforced concrete. During that work a colonial-era cemetery was found on the north side of the church, with the remains of fifteen people, along with indigenous ceramic finds dated between 300 BC and AD 300 and an ancient Christian cross, recovered by the National Museum. Mainly neoclassical in style with Baroque elements, the building was declared a national historic and architectural monument on 21 May 1998, by decree 26936-C. The diocese of San Jose was erected on 28 February 1850 by Pope Pius IX, raised to a metropolitan archdiocese on 16 February 1921 by Pope Benedict XV, and ceded further territory in 2005 for the new diocese of Cartago. The present archbishop is Monsignor Jose Rafael Quiros Quiros, installed on 4 July 2013. No source links this cathedral specifically to the abolition of the Costa Rican army in 1948-49 under Jose Figueres Ferrer, a major national event but one with no documented tie to the building. On 7 December 2021 Archbishop Quiros designated the cathedral as the National Shrine of Costa Rica, on the centenary of the archdiocese. Pope John Paul II came here on 3 March 1983, to meet Costa Rican priests, seminarians and religious, during the only papal visit the country has ever received.