Casco Viejo in 3 Days: A Walking Itinerary

Panama City sits nine degrees north of the equator. From ten in the morning until about three in the afternoon the sun on open cobblestone is genuinely punishing, and the humidity does not let up. Locals plan around it and so should you: sightseeing early, a long lunch and a pause at the hottest hours, rooftops at sunset, dinner after eight. Restaurants fill from nine, not seven.

Distances are trivial. The historic core is roughly six blocks by four, and you can cross it end to end in fifteen minutes. Wear shoes with a flat, grippy sole — the streets are original colonial stone and they eat heels and wheeled suitcases alike.

Morning. Start where the district starts: Plaza Catedral, also called Plaza Mayor or Plaza de la Independencia. The Metropolitan Cathedral, Catedral Basílica Santa María la Antigua, took over a hundred years to finish in the eighteenth century and was fully restored in 2019 ahead of the papal visit. Its two mother-of-pearl bell towers are the image most people keep of Panama. Go in early, when it is cool and empty.

Two blocks north lies Plaza Bolívar, shaded, quiet and lined with cafés. This is where the 1826 Amphictyonic Congress met at Simón Bolívar's invitation to attempt a union of the newly independent American republics. Have coffee here and look at the Iglesia y Convento de San Francisco de Asís on the corner.

Midday. The Museo del Canal Interoceánico, on Plaza Catedral itself, is the single museum to see if you only see one. It occupies the former Grand Hotel, later the headquarters of the French canal company, and it tells the whole story: the French failure, the yellow fever, the American construction, the 1977 treaties and the 1999 handover. Ninety minutes.

Afternoon. Pause. Or, if you are stubborn, walk to the ruins of the Convento de Santo Domingo and the Arco Chato — a flat, nearly unsupported brick arch that stood for centuries and was cited as evidence that the isthmus was seismically stable enough for a canal. It collapsed in 2003 and has been rebuilt.

Sunset. Walk Paseo Esteban Huertas, the bougainvillea-covered promenade along the old sea wall at the tip of the peninsula, with the modern skyline of Punta Paitilla glittering across the bay. Then up to a rooftop — Casa Casco, Tántalo or La Concordia. Order something cold and watch the cathedral towers go orange.

Dinner. Fonda Lo Que Hay: modern Panamanian in a courtyard, no reservations, arrive at eight or wait.

Morning. Iglesia San José, three blocks west, holds the Altar de Oro — the baroque golden altar that, in the story every guide tells, was painted or plastered over by a priest so Henry Morgan's pirates would overlook it during the 1671 sack of the original Panamá. Whether or not it is literally true, the altar survived and the city did not.

Late morning. Walk six minutes north to the Mercado de Mariscos. Skip the tourist-facing restaurant upstairs and buy a plastic cup of ceviche from the stalls: corvina in lime, or shrimp, or mixto, for two or three dollars. Cash only, go before three, and go hungry. It is the best-value meal in Panama City.

Afternoon. Uber twenty minutes east to Panamá Viejo, the ruins of the original city founded in 1519 — the first European settlement on the Pacific coast of the Americas — and burned during Morgan's raid. Climb the cathedral tower for a view that puts the old stone and the new skyline in one frame.

Evening. Live jazz at Danilo's Jazz Club inside the American Trade Hotel on Plaza Herrera, named for Danilo Pérez, the Panamanian pianist. Sets usually start around nine.

Dinner. Donde José if you booked weeks ago — sixteen seats, a tasting menu built entirely on Panamanian ingredients. Íntimo if you did not.

Morning. Miraflores Locks, twenty minutes by Uber. Transits cluster roughly between nine and eleven in the morning and again mid-afternoon; the schedule board at the entrance tells you what is coming. Watching a Panamax vessel rise thirty feet in a chamber built in 1913 is the reason most people come to this country.

Afternoon. The Amador Causeway, built from rock excavated out of the Culebra Cut, links four islands and gives you the Bridge of the Americas at one end and the Biomuseo — Frank Gehry's only building in Latin America, a crumple of coloured metal — at the other.

Late afternoon. Back in Casco: buy a real Panama hat (they are woven in Ecuador; the name is a nineteenth-century accident) from a specialist rather than a street stall, and sit down to a coffee tasting of Geisha, the Boquete varietal that repeatedly breaks world auction records.

Dinner. Maito, fifteen minutes away in San Francisco, is the most serious kitchen in the country and worth leaving the old town for. Or stay and finish at Salvaje for one more rooftop.

Add the San Blas Islands (Guna Yala) — a full day leaving around five in the morning, and the reason most people extend their trip — or Soberanía National Park's Pipeline Road, forty minutes away and one of the great birding walks on earth. Monkey Island on Lake Gatún is the half-day version.

Plaza Catedral is the most central point in the district: the museum is on the square, the rooftops are two minutes away and every itinerary above starts at your door. Our Plaza Catedral Loft is a one-bedroom mezzanine loft with a balcony facing the cathedral, sleeping up to four, from $120 a night direct. Read more about the square itself in our Plaza Catedral guide, or check your dates.