Casco Viejo, Panama City’s elegantly restored Old Town, needs to be viewed on foot. On most days, walking is the only way to navigate it. Impossibly narrow streets—designed for horses, not cars—choke traffic. Cabbies deliver tourists to renovated five-star hotels, then wait in near-standstill traffic to return to arterial roads. Pedestrians jostle for precious sidewalk space, playing an unspoken game of chicken; someone must enter the street to pass. The inconveniences seem worth it; the place is an urban delight. 

Tight Active Streets

Compressed streets and alleys, gridded centuries ago, release into bustling plazas with magnificent restored churches, classical government buildings, stately hotels, fine restaurants, and apartments. These landmarks share the social space with ice cream vendors, tour guides, natives selling hand-woven totes, diners in open-air cafes, and ubiquitous tourist police. The century-old plazas prove that humans create diverse, multi-use settings over time.

Elegant Plazas

I stumbled on Casco Viejo during a layover on a trip to a more remote part of the country. I should have done more research before I arrived. Instead, I just started taking pictures, marveling at what I saw, hoping to identify later what I was looking at. Old Town, built in waves through centuries, tells a story on every street, some challenging to decipher.

The easiest to understand might be the neighborhood’s unified identity. Spanish Colonial architecture lays down the foundation, elegantly defined by leaning, century-old balconies, red tile roofs, and thick orange, lemon, strawberry, and grape walls. The French, who tried—and failed—to build the canal in the late 19th century, provided an overlay: Italianate porch ironwork, the occasional pitched roof, and neoclassical government buildings. 

The mashup is like a thick broth, a bouillabaisse or gumbo, that welcomes other muscular treatments: a random Art Deco bank, a preserved 17th century Baroque church façade, the occasional Afro-Caribbean building, and government buildings with plaster angels in relief. You must add to the mix crumbling buildings on nearly every block yet to receive upgrades. Old meets new in pretty stark contrast. 

Subtle Vistas

The city’s grid is worthy of imitation. Unequal, rectangular blocks shaped to the contour of the land create a familiar navigability even as they offer surprises. Pie-slice-shaped buildings with flowered balconies and rounded arched doors occupy irregular intersections. Centuries-old cobblestone streets magically terminate in architectural focal points. Short, dark side streets provide tantalizing views of bright squares at their end.

Height constraints focus attention on every building, not on the tallest among them. Intricate architectural details—bright tile patterns set into white stucco walls, intricately carved wood doors—seem like gifts, and serve as reminders of the financial unlikelihood of doing something this detailed from scratch. The attention to detail isn’t by accident: The city government approves architectural plans for Caso Viejo, reducing the developer pain of added front-end expense with considerable tax abatements—30 years on property, 10 years on income, and five years on transfers. 

Work to Be Done

Work proceeds at its own pace. For every two restored buildings on a block, at least one begs for renovation. The ruinous walls, missing fenestration, and hollowed-out interiors (home to volunteer vegetation) of passed-over buildings add to the ambiance. The old town of Casco Viejo consists of two districts: San Felipe, approximately 60% restored; and Santa Anna, about 15% restored. Blocks of dilapidated buildings in Santa Anna may never be restored.

Derelict buildings, even in the “better” parts of town, speak to the folly of the manmade environment—volunteer vegetation, including palm trees, sprouts from abandoned buildings. Rust and mildew can even affect recently renovated buildings. Dilapidated buildings provide a reminder that without constant human supervision, structures quickly revert to ruins, especially in tropical climates.

World Heritage Site

This current revival is the latest of several. From the perspective of people alive today, Casco Viejo’s most significant comeback was when UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1997. That move followed 50 years of decline after World War II., coinciding with the rise of military dictatorships. Before UNESCO ruled, Old Town was neglected, rundown, and unsafe. Tourist brochures still warn tourists not to stray too far beyond Old Town’s borders. 

Interestingly, this version of Panama City, founded in 1673, isn’t the original downtown. In 1670, Welsh Pirate Henry Morgan laid waste to the first Panama City, whose remains are now part of the suburbs. After that, the Spanish relocated the city to a site with better fortification. A few protected artifacts remain from the new city’s earliest years, like Iglesia Santo Domingo Convent (shown above), built in 1641. The roped-off, crusty–brick relic reads like an exhibit in an outdoor art museum.

The Gongora House

I was disappointed that the Gongora House, the oldest Colonial home in town, was closed for repairs. Captain Paul Gongora, a Spanish merchant who dealt in pearls, erected the structure in 1756. Today the building serves as a cultural center and hosts regular exhibitions by local artists.

Though it has endured three fires, Gongora House has retained its original layout, which revolves around courtyards with narrow, columned balconies. A previous restoration reclaimed much of the building’s original woodwork—doors, windows, second-story plank floors and balconies, and beams—along with its clay and round stone floors. The building’s shrunken, twisted wood brackets look impossibly old when viewed from the street.

First National City Bank Building

Casco Viejo made a previous comeback after the Panama Canal opened in 1914. One artifact of this time is a restored Art Deco bank building, the former Panamanian headquarters of First National City Bank of New York (later Citibank), which was instrumental in financing the Panama Canal. The architecture firm Walker & Gillette modeled the building after branches in Manhattan and Buenos Aires. The building became a nightclub. It later fell into disuse, its walls painted with graffiti, its floors damaged by the elements.

A 2013 restoration preserved the horizontal, flat-roofed building with its monumental façade, companion high windows, whitewashed walls with rounded corners, and decorative exterior lines. The work created 5,210 square feet of event space with a state-of-the-art sound system. Inside renovation treats guests to 30-foot ceilings, ornate columns, and herringbone floors done with reclaimed old-growth timber acquired through underwater logging in the Panama Canal. 

American Trade Hotel

Next door is the neoclassical American Trade Hotel, located in a restored 1917 building designed by Peruvian architect Leonardo Villanueva Meyer, the most prominent 20th century architect in Panama City. Meyer used reinforced concrete to create the original four-story building, one of the city’s first “skyscrapers.” The structure originally housed a department store and bank at ground level with apartments above. 

The restoration converted ground-floor space into an expansive lobby. The building’s main architectural elements—tall, narrow windows and porches on each upper floor—remained intact when its owners purchased it in 2007. Porches on one side of the elaborately adorned building face a green plaza. The hotel’s relaxed reading room connects to a courtyard with handmade tiles and lush indigenous vegetation.

La Concordia Hotel

La Concordia Boutique Hotel is one of the city’s many fine flatiron buildings. The original structure on the centrally located site was lost in a 1906 kitchen fire. A 1907 rebuild followed the neo-renaissance, neocolonial style of the original, with concrete replacing wood in many places. The most recent renovation won an architectural prize in 2018.

During the first half of the 20th century, the building hosted prestigious tenants, including the Panama Banking Company, the Victor Talking Machine Company, and the Isthmus Tobacco Company. For a brief time, it was home to the consulate of the United Mexican States for the Republic of Panama. 

Café Coca-Cola

The Café Coca-Cola opened in 1875, making it Panama City’s oldest continuously operating restaurant. It’s also the only restaurant in the world that Coca-Cola allows to bear its name. Visitors to the legendary diner have included Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Eva Peron, and Pablo Neruda. The building’s Afro-Caribbean architecture emphasizes high ceilings and large windows to circulate air. Deep eaves and a pitched roof keep out rain. Bars on first-floor windows speak to crime in the neighborhood, though the situation seems to be improving. Just 15 or 20 years ago, this part of town was considered run-down and dangerous. 

Casa Arango

One evening while walking I stumbled upon this welcoming Spanish Colonial villa, Casa Arango. I later discovered the jewel box was a 2024 renovation of a 19th century building that was beyond repair. The developer used historical records to reconstruct a façade with double doors on two levels and deep brackets. The living room in the three-bedroom home, each with a private bath, opens to a front balcony that looks out on a restored neighborhood on a cobblestone street. It also has a large backyard, an oddity in this urban setting, with a barbecue area and a private bar, and two parking spaces behind a carriage garage door.

Central Hotel

It’s hard to miss the massive and immaculate Central Hotel, a fixture on the Plaza de Independencia, Panama City’s central plaza. An eight-year renovation preserved the symmetrical hotel’s French Colonial architecture. A centered front door greets visitors. Porches with tall double doors wrap the second story. A mansard roof with dormer windows completes the French treatment.  

The Central Hotel was Panama City’s first hotel, built in 1874. It reopened in 2016 with 135 rooms, a spa, and a rooftop pool. During the renovation, the owner stored the original staircase and balconies in a warehouse. They were replaced once the building was structurally safe. The refurbished stairway dominates the building’s courtyard interior.

Municipal Palace

This grand, symmetrical, lavishly adorned building doubles as the seat of city government and the Museum of Panamanian History. Italian architect Genaro Ruggieri designed the 1910 building in a Neo-Renaissance style replete with Greek columns, curved pediments, decorative cornices, and rooftop mythical figures.

A reclining nude statue in the entrance hall greets visitors; it represents Panama bathing in the waters of two oceans. The building has gone through two recent  renovations. The Friends of the Museums did a major restoration in 2000. Then, in 2012, the exhibition was remodeled. As part of that work, tradespeople corrected leaks in the walls and upper slab.

All photos by the author.