A visit to Casco Viejo, the old Panama City

On a recent Saturday, I decided to do some solo exploration in the city -- in particular, I wanted to return to Casco Viejo, a touristy section of town I'd been to before with friends acting as guides.  The goals of this trip were various:

• honestly, partly I did this just to get out of the house and kill time on a Saturday;
• there are a couple of cool museums I'd heard about that I want to peek into, including the Museo de Molas (kind of a quilt museum; that'll be a future post once I actually get there);
• I wanted to practice navigating around the city on my own some more; and finally,
• I needed to do some grocery shopping, and it's pretty easy to stop at a supermarket on the way back.

What's Casco Viejo?

It's a section of Panama often called the "old city" (although it's not the oldest section, which no longer exists: read on).  It has very picturesque buildings and very narrow streets; lots of shops and museums and restaurants and tattoo parlors and historic churches and more.

It's on the ocean, on one edge of a bay.  The times I've come before, I've gotten rides in someone's car or in a [truly terrifying] cab, but I learned from my hiking buddy Yesenia how to get here walking via the Cinta Costera (coastal strip walking path), and so I took the bus (25¢) to the main terminal, the metro (35¢) to Cinco de Mayo station, navigated the crazy Panamanian streets to the Cinta del Costero (I know my way now!!!), and from there had a lovely walk.  

Here's a view of Casco Viejo from across the bay,
maybe a third of a mile still to walk.

The middle of Casco Viejo has a brick-lined plaza with a gazebo in the center, and from here I visited three different buildings.

Beyond the tree is the Canal Museum;
beyond the gazebo is a small Panama history museum.

To get into the history museum, I had to tell them my age and my nationality.  I'm not sure whether it's that I'm beyond retirement age for women here (in Panama, there are different retirement ages for women and men), or if it's that I'm from the U.S., or if everyone gets in free, but I didn't pay a cent to enter the history museum.  It was a very small place, with a bunch of artifacts from the past 150 years: furniture, portraits, newspaper articles, and dioramas of the area.  One of the artifacts they had was the torn flag from the 1964 altercation between U.S. troops and Panamanian students.

The Canal Museum also asked my age and nationality, and so in this museum I know that U.S. citizens pay $15 to enter, but my advanced age knocked the price down to $7.50.  It's a very informative museum, with arrows on the floor to guide people chronologically through the twisty rooms.  My husband and I had read David McCullough's amazing history of the building of the Canal ("The Path Between the Seas";  I highly recommend), and it was neat to see in person the artifacts that we'd read about.  

A giant metal dirt scoop used to help excavate the canal,
with the medical hero Gorgas in the background.
Gorgas is the doctor who turned around the yellow fever epidemics
by targeting mosquitos. He's got hospitals here named after him;
he's a highly admired figure both in Panama and in the U.S.

Here's me, next to the giant scoop.

McCullough's book ends when the Canal opened in 1914.  The museum continues on from there, including history I'd read at the Ciudad del Saber, and also more that I should have known about but didn't (like the U.S. invasion of Panama in the 80's to extricate Noriega, and to destabilize a military government in Panama; it was a kind of horrific thing for many people here).  It's a good museum for history buffs -- I'd just recommend bringing a jacket, because the air conditioning in the place is something fierce and I was too cold to learn as much toward the end of the exhibits.  

Iglesia La Merced

Another building on the plaza in Casco Viejo, just around the corner from the two I'd already described, is a beautiful 350-year-old church.  This (in addition to the Mola Museum) was one of the places I'd targeted for visiting today, so of course I spent a bunch of time in there.  There's no entrance fee, but they do have receptacles for donations, and I left a small one.

Iglesia La Merced (Church of Mercy); 
this facade was built in 1680. 

Inside this church are many of the things you'd expect in a church (stained glass windows, sacred art, beautiful pews, a stunning altar).

A view of the far-away altar from a rear pew.

There's also a small, yet very informative, history of the Casco Viejo.  

• 1673, the pirate Captain Morgan destroyed the original site of Panama City; what's left of that is apparently still ruins, so the city moved to the current site.  The current site was carefully planned but then the plans kept changing.  
• In the 1700's, there were three huge fires that destroyed big parts of the city and modified the overall structure.
• By 1814, the city was built up with giant stone walls and dry moats surrounding it, to help prevent attacks.  There were lots of orchards outside the city walls.  
• In 1886, the city government regretted the walls, and declared people could take down the stones, or build other buildings using the walls, or otherwise pull those down.  
• Casco Viejo was, I think, still the main part of the city when the French were making their initial forays into canal-digging here.  At that point, Panama was still part of Columbia. 

Speaking of Columbia, on the other side of the church from the history display, there's giant artistic tapestry, which this photo doesn't do justice to.  

You can see the huge size of the tapestry
because of the person standing at the lower left side.

Here's a bit more detail.

This is a 2024 painting, acrylic on cloth, by Aristides Ureña, and it's called the Pilgrimage of Hope (El peregrinaje de la Esperanza).

It shows people along the paths in the frontier zone between Columbia and Panama, passing (or trying to pass) through the very dangerous Darien gap. Here's me mangling some of the description that the church provided on a plaque by the side.  

"The quantity of disappeared persons, the cadavers along the route, lead to personal reflection; all have been hidden/obscured, faded into nothing without a proper burial place; there are no records even today. We don't say how many people have been victims, and we can't even know."

"Therefore, it's this path (the "chicken-eating trail", as this outlet in the jungle is known) that Aristides shows us in his pictorial work. The work is intended to give visibility to this epic tragedy: thousands of human beings on their pilgrimage in search of Hope."

"The lower part it shows us immigrants, adults, children, and women along the paths, faces of desperation and hope. The canoes full of people in the middle show distinct cultures which travel along these paths, underneath rainy clouds, which heighten the danger of this big trip. At the center at the top, the Virgin is decorated with clothes of the indigenous culture, at the sides of heads of plátanos typical of the agricultural resources from the Darien region."

. . . and . . . that's the church of Mercy.  

As I left Casco Viejo and headed back along the Cinta Costera to my metro station, this was the view that met my eyes:  sky scrapers, and also pelicans and cranes hanging out on the boats.  

Don't let the pelican drive the boat.

Wrap-up

Now that you've gotten to see a bit of what I saw on my outing, let's see how well I accomplished those goals of mine.  

• "honestly, partly I did this just to get out of the house and kill time on a Saturday;"
  I'll declare success on this.  The round-trip (from AirBnB and back again) was about 5 hours, depositing me back home right as the afternoon rains began.  Perfect timing!! Along the way, I got to see a lot of interesting things, get fresh air and exercise, and generally get a break from writing.  Good!
  
  
• "there are a couple of cool museums I'd heard about that I want to peek into, including the Museo de Molas (kind of a quilt museum; that'll be a future post once I actually get there);"
  I still want to go see the Museo de Molas, but I was glad to get to discover places I didn't even know existed.  This is a great one not to have completely checked off, because it gives me an excuse to go back again.
  
  
• "I wanted to practice navigating around the city on my own some more;"
  Also, success.  I'm definitely getting more comfortable with the route between the Cinco de Mayo Metro stop and the Cinta de Costera, which thereby gives me access to lots of stuff, because the Cinta de Costera goes on for miles past a bunch of places worth visiting.  
  
  
• "I needed to do some grocery shopping, and it's pretty easy to stop at a supermarket on the way back."
  And, check! Groceries bought, so I have food and etc to last me for a week or more.  I feel like I'm really getting the. hang of things here.