Somewhere on the eastern edge of the Zapote District of the San Jose canton, right past the ring highway, and a few blocks down from the somewhat fashionable Multiplaza Curridabat, but surrounded by much less fashionable buildings (including a muffler shop, a Repuesto Coreano (Korean speciality autoshop), a lottery post, a motorcycle parts store, an auto parts store, another auto parts store...okay, you get the point), is a nondescript office building that looks like... well, I think I just said it was nondescript, right? It looks like a building on a community college campus, or maybe the central office building for a local electrical utility. A big old boring hunk of brutalist concrete just sitting there on a road filled with other businesses.
But what is it? Well, as a reader, you have already had this spoiled for you: this is the Presidential Palace of Costa Rica. Although the name may be a misnomer, because the president does not live in this building. This is an office building where the president and executive branch works, but the president has to live in his own home. Costa Rica is one of the most developed nations of Latin America, and yet its seat of power is perhaps the single most boring and unaesthetic governmental buildings imaginable.
My own guess is that this is not at all a coincidence, or a sign of unconcern or laziness. Quite the opposite, in fact. Costa Rica abolished its military in 1948, after a Civil War, and closely attached to that was a fear of, and disdain of, the executive branch. The Presidency itself was deemphasized, to avoid any type of epaullete-wearing, limousine riding strongman waving to the masses from a sumptuous balcony. And, so in fact, it would be impossible for the president to do that, since it is impossible to project an era of glorious inevitability while looking out an office building window into a muffler shop. The utilitarian, non-glamorous nature of the office building is, in effect, a way to say the President is just another worker. Even the location, miles away from the ceremonial heart of the city is a way to say the executive branch is not the heart of the country.
At least, that is how I see it.
If you wish to draw your own conclusions, a quick search for pictures or descriptions of the building will probably show my point--because there is very little available to see.