Start from 46 curated places around Panama City, PA, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Donde José
A tiny tasting-menu room in Casco Viejo seating only a handful of guests a night, building a single set menu around native Panamanian ingredients and traditional techniques. This is the city's destination special-occasion meal for people who care about where the food comes from.
Fonda Lo Que Hay
A modern fonda in Casco Viejo from the Donde José kitchen, serving a short daily menu of Panamanian street and market food turned refined, much of it built on the morning's fresh seafood. The room is chic and lively and the menu changes with what is good that day.
Trails & outdoors
Parque Natural Metropolitano
A genuine tropical forest inside the city limits, laced with short marked trails where you can spot howler monkeys, sloths and toucans within minutes of downtown. The Mirador trail climbs to a viewpoint over the skyline and canal entrance.
Cerro Ancón
The forested hill topped by a giant Panamanian flag, the highest point in the city, with a paved path winding up through trees where sloths and toucans turn up. The summit gives a sweeping view over Casco Viejo, the skyline, the canal and the Bridge of the Americas.
Things to do
Biomuseo
The brightly colored Frank Gehry museum on the Amador Causeway, telling the story of how the rise of the Panama isthmus reshaped life on the planet. Immersive galleries plus an aquarium and gardens make it the city's standout museum experience.
Museo del Canal Interoceánico de Panamá
The canal history museum housed in a grand old building on Casco Viejo's main plaza, tracing the waterway's construction, the long struggle for sovereignty and Panama's relationship with the United States. The serious museum for understanding how the canal shaped the country.
Landmarks & sights
Casco Viejo (Casco Antiguo)
The walled colonial quarter the city moved to after pirates burned the original settlement, now a tangle of cobblestone lanes, restored balconied facades and small plazas. It is where locals go to wander, eat and watch the sunset over the bay, and the whole district is the attraction more than any single building.
Iglesia de San José (Altar de Oro)
A modest Casco Viejo church that guards the Altar de Oro, a baroque golden altar carved in mahogany and covered in gold leaf. The story goes a priest painted it black to hide it from the privateer Henry Morgan, and it is the one great treasure that survived the sacking of the old city.