The crossroads of two oceans — Casco Viejo rooftops, the Canal locks and a skyline rising from the jungle
Panama City is the only capital city in the world where you can see both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans within the same day — a position at the world's narrowest land bridge that has made it a centre of commerce and migration for 500 years. The city has two faces: Casco Viejo (UNESCO World Heritage), the crumbling and now-revived colonial quarter on a narrow peninsula jutting into the Pacific Bay, and the gleaming modern skyline of Punta Paitilla and Marbella that rivals Miami in height and density. The Panama Canal — one of the world's most extraordinary engineering achievements, connecting…
The city was founded by Spanish conquistadors in 1519 — the first permanent European settlement on the Pacific coast of the Americas — and sacked and burned by Henry Morgan's pirates in 1671; the surviving settlers moved 8km to the current peninsula site (Casco Viejo) and built a new city. The French began digging the Canal in 1881 but abandoned it after 22,000 workers died of yellow fever and malaria; the US took over in 1904 under Teddy Roosevelt, solved the disease problem with mosquito eradication, and completed it in 1914. Panama separated from Colombia in 1903 in a US-backed coup, speci…