Guayabo National Monument lies northwest of Turrialba in Costa Rica’s Cartago Province, on the slopes of Turrialba Volcano. The protected area covers about 233 hectares, including roughly 20 hectares of archaeological structures and surrounding premontane rainforest. Its elevation ranges from about 990 to 1,300 metres. The combination of ancient stonework and living forest makes this more than a stop among ruins: it is a protected landscape where cultural evidence and local ecology occupy the same ground.
The National System of Conservation Areas, SINAC, dates the site’s occupation broadly from about 1000 BC to AD 1400, a span of roughly 2,400 years. It identifies the period around AD 800 as the high point of the settlement’s development and the time when many of the stone structures visible today took shape. The chronology is a framework drawn from research, not a claim that the same community or political system remained unchanged for millennia.