Panama City

Panama City was founded on 15 August 1519 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro Arias Dávila, as the first permanent European city on the Pacific coast of the Americas. It was the starting point for the expeditions that conquered the Inca Empire, and the Pacific end of the route across the isthmus that carried most of Spain's American gold and silver to the fairs of Nombre de Dios and Portobelo. By 1670 it had about 15,000 inhabitants. On 28 January 1671 the privateer Henry Morgan sacked the city and it was destroyed by fire.

The city was formally re-established on 21 January 1673 on a defensible peninsula 8 km from the original settlement — today's Casco Viejo — and the ruins of the first site became Panamá Viejo. Fortunes revived with the California Gold Rush: the Panama Railroad, opened across the isthmus in 1855, brought a flow of travellers, and the French canal company of Ferdinand de Lesseps made its headquarters in a hotel on the main plaza in the 1880s. After independence from Colombia in 1903, the American-built canal and the Canal Zone along its banks shaped the city's growth for most of the 20th century.

In December 1989, during the US invasion to remove Manuel Noriega, fire destroyed part of the El Chorrillo neighbourhood, a district of old wooden buildings beside the old town. The canal and the former Zone passed to Panama by 1999, and in 1997 Panamá Viejo and the historic district were together named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since then a banking and construction boom has filled the bayfront with towers, the Cinta Costera has been built out over the sea, and the city opened its first metro line in 2014.

The capital is a city of great cultural diversity. Mestizo Panamanians live alongside Afro-Antillean families descended from the West Indian labourers who built the railway and the canal, with Chinese, Arab and Jewish communities and newer arrivals from Venezuela, Colombia and North America. The former Canal Zone left its mark on Balboa, once its administrative centre, and English is still widely spoken in the city.

The city's sound is loud and varied, from reggae en español, Spanish-language reggae that originated in Panama in the late 1980s, to the music of Carnival, whose stages and night parades fill the Cinta Costera. November brings the Fiestas Patrias, the national holidays that begin with Separation Day on 3 November. Baseball and football are the city's favourite sports, and the national football team reached its first World Cup in 2018.

Casco Viejo is both the city's showpiece and a living district, where restored mansions, churches and rooftop bars share the streets with residents. Herons have strutted in the courtyard of the presidential palace since 1922, when President Belisario Porras brought them there on the suggestion of the poet Ricardo Miró. Catholicism remains the main faith, and the cathedral on the main plaza is the seat of the archdiocese.

The 2023 census counted 410,354 people in the city itself and 1,086,990 in the wider Panamá District. The old central districts lost population between the 2010 and 2023 censuses, while the rest of the district grew by about half.

Banking, commerce, shipping and tourism drive the economy, and the city is the political and administrative centre of the country. Traffic congestion is a constant problem that spills over into neighbouring Panamá Oeste and Colón; the metro, with two lines and a monorail under construction to the west, was built to ease it. Uber has been controversial, with many taxi drivers demanding that it stop operating.

Water is a recurring worry. The canal depends on the fresh water of Gatún Lake, and in early December 2023 low water levels cut canal transits from the normal 36 ships a day to 22, leaving ships backed up waiting to cross. In 2025 the canal authorities began plans for a new dam to feed Gatún Lake, and from 3 September 2026 the canal allowed 34 ships a day instead of 36.

Ceviche, commonly made from corvina and prepared with lemon juice, chopped onion, celery and cilantro, is a city favourite, and the main fish market at the entrance to Casco Viejo is a cheap place to eat seafood. Fried fish with patacones, twice-fried green plantain, is a common plate. Sancocho, a chicken soup thickened with ñame and flavoured with culantro, is the national dish, and arroz con pollo is part of the traditional Christmas meal.

Breakfast often means fried foods such as hojaldras, a fry-bread, or carimañolas, cassava fritters stuffed with beef. Fondas, small local eateries, serve a quick, cheap lunch of rice, beans, meat or fried fish, salad and patacones. Afro-Antillean cooking is one of the influences on the national cuisine, and the city's restaurants range from Chinese and Arab to Colombian, Peruvian and Venezuelan.

Panamanian treats include chicheme, a drink made from pounded maize, and raspao, shaved ice topped with condensed milk and fruit flavours. Nightlife centres on Casco Viejo and Calle Uruguay, where the bars serve local lagers such as Balboa and Atlas and seco, the national spirit. Panama also grows some of the world's most prized coffee, the Geisha variety from Boquete in the western highlands.