Casco Antiguo (San Felipe) Walking Guide: Four Plazas, Golden Altar & Museo del Canal

Founded on 21 January 1673 on a rocky volcanic peninsula eight kilometres southwest of burned Panamá Viejo, Casco Antiguo (officially the parish of San Felipe, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1997) was built as a sea-walled fortress surrounded on three sides by Pacific reefs. Across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Spanish coral-stone churches and convents were joined by wrought-iron French mansard townhouses built for engineers of Ferdinand de Lesseps' canal company and Italianate republican palaces. You can walk the entire peninsula in three to four hours by connecting its four historic plazas.

Plaza de la Independencia: Cathedral Basilica and Museo del Canal

Begin at the heart of the colonial grid on Plaza de la Independencia (Plaza Mayor), where Panama declared independence from Spain in 1821 and separation from Colombia on 3 November 1903. Dominating the western side is the Metropolitan Cathedral Basilica of Santa María la Antigua, built between 1688 and 1796 with twin bell towers encrusted with shimmering mother-of-pearl shells from the Pearl Islands. Directly across the square stands the 1874 former Grand Hotel, once headquarters of the French Universal Interoceanic Canal Company, which now houses the superb Museo del Canal Interoceánico, charting everything from pre-Columbian trail crossings and the 1855 Gold Rush railway to the 1977 Torrijos-Carter handover. Check the official museum site for current exhibition schedules.

The Golden Altar of San José, Arco Chato, and Plaza Herrera

Walk west along Avenida A to the 1675 Church of San José to inspect the famous Altar de Oro (Golden Altar), a monumental baroque reredos carved from bitter cedar and mahogany and coated in gold leaf; according to colonial chronicle, Augustinian friars saved it during Henry Morgan's 1671 raid by painting it matte black to disguise its value. Two blocks west rises yellow-stuccoed Plaza Herrera, built over the colonial bullring. Next, head east along Avenida A to the roofless brick ruins of the 1678 Convent of Santo Domingo, where the wide, mortarless flat arch (Arco Chato) stood for centuries without centring, cited by engineers in the 1900s as proof that Panama lacked the volcanic tremors of rival Nicaragua.

Plaza Francia (Las Bóvedas), MUMO, and Plaza Bolívar

At the southernmost tip of the peninsula, Plaza Francia sits inside the 17th-century Chiriquí sea bastion beneath the vaulted promenade of Las Bóvedas, honouring the 22,000 Afro-Caribbean and French workers who lost their lives during the 1880s canal excavations. Just off the plaza, enter the free Museo de la Mola (MUMO) to study 200 multi-layered reverse-appliqué textiles stitched by women of the Guna Yala archipelago, then return along the bayfront past the 1908 Teatro Nacional (with ceiling frescoes by Roberto Lewis) and the Church of San Francisco de Asís on Plaza Bolívar before finishing at a rooftop terrace or the Mercado de Mariscos.