Panama City & the Canal

Before the Spanish, the isthmus was home to Indigenous chiefdoms, those in the east speaking the Cueva language. Pedrarias Dávila founded Panamá in 1519 on the Pacific shore, and it became the transit point for Peruvian silver, carried across the isthmus on mule trails and river boats to Nombre de Dios and, from 1597, to Portobelo, where great trade fairs met the treasure fleets. The wealth drew raiders: Henry Morgan took Portobelo in 1668, the San Lorenzo fort at the Chagres River in 1670 and Panamá itself in 1671, when the city burned. It was rebuilt in 1673 on a defensible peninsula, today's Casco Viejo, and the ruins of the first site became Panamá Viejo.

The California Gold Rush brought the Panama Railroad, completed in 1855, and with it the new Caribbean terminus of Colón. Ferdinand de Lesseps's French canal company failed in the 1880s, and after Panama's secession from Colombia in 1903 the United States built the canal between 1904 and 1914, damming the Chagres to form Gatún Lake and cutting through the continental divide at Culebra. The Canal Zone, a US-run strip on both banks, divided the region for most of the century; the Flag Riots of January 1964 began at its edge.

In December 1989 the US invasion to remove Manuel Noriega was fought largely here, and fighting and fires destroyed much of the El Chorrillo neighbourhood. The canal passed to Panama on 31 December 1999, and the former Zone's bases and housing were absorbed into the city. A third set of locks, at Agua Clara and Cocolí, opened in 2016. Panamá Oeste was split from Panamá province in 2014, and in late 2023 mass protests over the contract for the Cobre Panamá copper mine in Colón province ended when the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional and the mine was closed.

The canal region is Panama's most mixed. Mestizo Panamanians share the capital with Afro-Antillean families descended from the West Indian labourers, many from Barbados and Jamaica, who built the railway and the canal; with Chinese, Indian, Arab and Jewish communities; and with a newer wave of Venezuelan, Colombian and North American residents. The former Canal Zone left its own traces in the tidy clapboard housing of Balboa and Gamboa and in English words that slip into everyday Spanish.

On the Caribbean coast of Colón, the Congo tradition of the Afro-colonial communities is strongest. In Portobelo and nearby villages, dances, drumming and masked devils re-enact the story of cimarrones, enslaved people who escaped Spanish rule, especially in the Carnival season, and the Congo cultural expressions are recognised as UNESCO intangible heritage. Portobelo is also the home of the Black Christ, a dark wooden statue in the church of San Felipe, which draws pilgrims on 21 October, some walking from the capital and some crawling the final stretch.

The capital's own rhythm is louder: reggaeton and Spanish-language reggae from the working-class neighbourhoods, salsa in the bars, the Carnival parades along the Cinta Costera, and the patriotic marching bands that take over the streets on the independence days of early November.

The metropolitan area around Panama City, spreading west across the canal into Arraiján and La Chorrera and north into San Miguelito, holds well over a million people and the bulk of Panama's jobs. Banking, law firms, shipping, logistics and the canal authority fill the towers of Obarrio, Punta Pacífica and Costa del Este, while the former Zone around Clayton houses universities and regional offices. Colón, the second focus, lives from its port and its free trade zone, founded in 1948, but much of the old city is poor and its wooden tenements are in poor repair.

Panamá Oeste is the region's fastest-growing part, a commuter belt of housing estates whose workers cross the Bridge of the Americas or the Centenario bridge each morning, which makes traffic the daily grievance and the reason the metro is being extended west. Further out, Chame and San Carlos have beach towns where capital families keep weekend houses.

Water is the central worry. The canal and the city both draw on the rain-fed lakes of the Chagres basin, and the 2023 drought forced the canal to cut the number of daily transits.

The capital eats from every coast. Ceviche of corvina with lime, onion and culantro is sold by the cup on the waterfront, and fried whole fish with patacones, twice-fried green plantain, is a weekend ritual. Breakfast is hojaldras, puffy fried dough, or carimañolas, cassava fritters filled with meat, with a slice of fried white cheese; sancocho, the chicken and root-vegetable soup flavoured with culantro, is the comfort dish, and arroz con pollo appears at every family party.

On the Caribbean side of Colón, cooking takes on coconut: arroz con coco, fish stewed in coconut milk, and rondón, the West Indian seafood and root-vegetable stew. Afro-Antillean bakeries in Colón and the capital sell West Indian breads and cakes, and Chinese-Panamanian restaurants are everywhere.

Street stalls sell chicheme, a sweet maize drink. The capital's restaurant scene, centred on Casco Viejo, reworks these ingredients for visitors, while the bars serve local lager and seco, the national spirit.

Panama City's Casco Viejo is the place to start: the cathedral on Plaza de la Independencia, the gold altar of San José, the ruins of the Santo Domingo convent, the presidential palace and the sea wall of Las Bóvedas, all within a few blocks. East along the bay, the stone tower and ruins of Panamá Viejo mark the first city, and to the west the Amador Causeway leads out to Frank Gehry's Biomuseo. Behind the city, Metropolitan Natural Park and Ancon Hill give views over both.

The canal can be seen from the Miraflores Locks visitor centre, a few kilometres from downtown, or on a partial-transit boat trip. Further north, Soberanía National Park's Pipeline Road near Gamboa is famous for birdwatching, and Barro Colorado Island in Gatún Lake is a Smithsonian research station. On the Caribbean side, the Gatún and Agua Clara locks lie just outside Colón.

The Caribbean coast east of Colón leads to Portobelo, whose bay is lined with the batteries of Santiago and San Jerónimo, and to the reefs of Isla Grande; west of the canal, Fort San Lorenzo stands above the mouth of the Chagres. Offshore in the Pacific, Taboga is an easy day trip by ferry, and the Pearl Islands, with Contadora's beaches, lie further out in the Gulf of Panama.