Casco Viejo, Panama City's old town

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Casco Viejo, Panama City's old town

Casco Viejo is where Panama City keeps its history, and walking it you feel the whole strange story of the place in one square kilometre. This is the old town: narrow streets, colourful colonial buildings, half-ruined churches, and boutique hotels carved out of restored eighteenth-century houses. A generation ago it was a no-go quarter run by gangs. Today it is a UNESCO-protected district of cafes, rooftops, and restored facades, and the turnaround is part of what makes it interesting.

What gives the old town its charge is what sits behind it. Look out over the bay and you see the other Panama: a wall of glass towers, the offshore-banking skyline that grew on money the country would rather you did not ask too closely about. From across the water it could be a slice of Miami or any big American city, dropped onto the edge of Central America. Old colonial stone in the foreground, that gleaming imported skyline behind. Few cities lay out their contradictions so plainly.

Be warned that the makeover has a flip side. At times Casco Viejo feels a little too perfect, polished and curated to the point where some of the rough authenticity you might expect has been tidied away. It is handsome, but it is handsome in a managed, slightly staged way.

Even so, it is the part of Panama City I would give my time to. You can walk the whole quarter in a couple of hours, ideally in the evening when the buildings are lit and the heat finally drops. Stop at the waterfront promenade for the skyline, find the fish market for ceviche, and take it for what it is: a good-looking, slightly staged old town with the most revealing view in the country sitting right behind it.