Things to Do in Panama City 2026: A Curated Guide from Casco Viejo

Panama City is a place that refuses to be only one thing. She is the canal, of course, the great engineering feat that cleaves two oceans. She is the skyline, those impossible glass towers rising out of a tropical isthmus like the future imagined by someone in 1985. She is the old quarter, the cobblestones of Casco Viejo, where the ghosts of Spanish governors still pace beneath the bougainvillea. She is the rainforest at her edge, where toucans cross the road at dawn and the howler monkeys make a sound you mistake, the first time you hear it, for thunder.

To make a list of things to do in Panama City is therefore an act of compression, of choosing which of her faces to show first. I have lived among these streets long enough to know that no traveler sees all of them in a single visit. But I can tell you which doors are worth opening, which hours are sacred, which experiences will return to you, years later, with the slow weight of memory.

The Hours of the Old Quarter

Begin in Casco Viejo. The old city is small, walkable end to end in twenty minutes, and yet she holds more story per square meter than almost any neighborhood in the Americas. Walk her at three different times of day if you can. In the morning, when the bakeries open and the streets still hold the cool of the night. At sunset, when the light turns the limestone walls gold and the rooftop bars begin to fill. After dark, when the lamps catch the laundry on the high balconies and the live music spills out of the doorways.

Visit the Iglesia de San José to see the famous Golden Altar, the one the priest is said to have saved from the pirate Henry Morgan by painting it black. Sit in Plaza Bolívar in the late afternoon with a coffee. Climb to the seawall, the Paseo de las Bóvedas, and look out across the bay toward the new city. The old quarter is itself the activity. To wander her without agenda is the deepest form of doing.

The Canal at Miraflores

No visit to Panama City is complete without the canal. The Miraflores Locks, fifteen minutes from Casco Viejo by taxi, offers the closest view of the great vessels passing through. Time your visit for mid morning or mid afternoon, when ship traffic is most likely. The visitor center has a museum that explains the engineering, the history, the politics. The terrace allows you to stand a few meters from a container ship the size of a city block as it is lowered, slowly, between two oceans.

For a different angle, consider the Agua Clara Locks on the Caribbean side, where the newer Neopanamax locks accommodate the largest vessels. Or take a partial transit by boat, three to four hours, which lets you experience the canal from the water itself. There is something nearly spiritual about being inside the lock as the gates close behind you.

The Forest Within the City

Panama City is one of the only capitals in the world with a primary rainforest inside her municipal limits. Parque Natural Metropolitano, twenty minutes from Casco Viejo, offers a network of trails through hills thick with sloths, agoutis, toucans, and more than two hundred bird species. Go early, before the heat, before the tour groups. Walk slowly. Look up.

For the more ambitious, the Camino de Cruces and the Pipeline Road in Soberanía National Park rank among the great birding sites of the Americas. A morning with a local guide will reveal birds you did not know existed.

The Markets and the Cuisine

Mercado de Mariscos, the fish market at the edge of Casco Viejo, opens at dawn and runs through the morning. The ceviche stands along the upper level serve the freshest cups of corvina and octopus you will eat in Panama, often for less than five dollars. Eat standing up. Watch the boats unload.

For deeper food culture, the Casco Antiguo’s restaurants now offer everything from starred tasting menus to traditional fondas where workers eat sancocho at long communal tables. The neighborhood has become, in the past decade, one of the great culinary corners of Latin America.

The Indigenous Encounter

The Guna and Emberá peoples are not abstractions in Panama. They are living cultures, present in the city, present in their ancestral lands. The Emberá Drua community, less than two hours from the city, welcomes respectful visitors for day trips that include traditional dance, body painting, and meals prepared in the village. The Guna molas, the intricate reverse applique textiles, can be found at the artisan market in Casco Viejo and in the Reprosa galleries.

If your itinerary allows, a full overnight to the Guna Yala archipelago is worth every hour of travel. More on that elsewhere.

What to Leave for Next Time

This is the harder question, and the more honest one. You will not see all of Panama City in three days, nor in five. Leave the Causeway for an evening of cycling and sunset views. Leave the BioMuseo, designed by Frank Gehry, for a slow afternoon. Leave the rooftop pools, the Sunday brunches at the boutique hotels, the after dark live jazz at the small bars off Avenida Central.

Leave something for the next visit. The city is patient. She has been here a long time, and she will wait.