The Real Panama City Tour

Overview

A private full-day tour through old and new Panama City: Panama La Vieja's ruins, Casco Antiguo's colonial streets and landmark buildings, and real modern neighborhoods like Caledonia Avenue, El Chorrillo, and Chinatown.

This private guided tour discovers old and new Panama City in one day: first Panama La Vieja, the ruins of the original settlement, then Casco Antiguo (Old Town) to wander its streets and view historic buildings such as the Presidential Palace and the Metropolitan Cathedral, and finally modern Panama and real, lived-in areas like Caledonia Avenue, El Chorrillo, and Chinatown, well beyond the standard tourist checklist.

Highlights

• Panama La Vieja See the real ruins of the original 1519 Spanish settlement.
• Presidential Palace and Metropolitan Cathedral View these real historic landmark buildings in Casco Antiguo.
• Caledonia Avenue and El Chorrillo See real, working-class Panama City neighborhoods rarely covered on standard tours.
• Chinatown A look at Panama City's real, long-established Chinatown district.

What Stops Does This Tour Make?

A popular starting point — every Voyzo itinerary is fully customizable, so we'll shape the order and stops around your group.

Important Information

Frequently Asked Questions

About This Tour

A private full-day tour through old and new Panama City: Panama La Vieja's ruins, Casco Antiguo's colonial streets and landmark buildings, and real modern neighborhoods like Caledonia Avenue, El Chorrillo, and Chinatown. This private guided tour discovers old and new Panama City in one day: first Panama La Vieja, the ruins of the original settlement, then Casco Antiguo (Old Town) to wander its streets and view historic buildings such as the Presidential Palace and the Metropolitan Cathedral, and finally modern Panama and real, lived-in areas like Caledonia Avenue, El Chorrillo, and Chinatown, well beyond the standard tourist checklist.

Panama La Vieja isn't a vague ruin — it's the real site of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Panamá, founded on August 15, 1519 by the Spanish governor Pedro Arias Dávila (Pedrarias), making it the oldest European settlement on the Pacific coast of the Americas. Within years it had become a launching point for the conquest of Peru and a transit stop for gold and silver on their way back to Spain, growing to roughly 10,000 residents before the pirate Henry Morgan's 1671 raid and the fire that followed left it in ruins. Its 28-hectare complex of cathedral, monastery, and residential foundations is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

After Panama La Vieja's destruction, the city was rebuilt on a more defensible peninsula a few kilometers away — the walled quarter known today as Casco Antiguo, or Casco Viejo. This tour walks its colonial-era streets and points out real landmark buildings along the way, including the Presidential Palace and the Metropolitan Cathedral, before moving on to the parts of Panama City that most standard sightseeing itineraries skip entirely.

That's where El Chorrillo and Caledonia come in. El Chorrillo was founded in 1915, settled largely by Caribbean and Antillean laborers who had come to build the Panama Canal between 1904 and 1914, and its Caribbean-influenced wooden architecture still reflects that history. The neighborhood was heavily damaged during the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, and it remains, today, a real, working-class, lived-in part of the city with deep Afro-Antillean roots — visited here respectfully, as a genuine part of Panama City's story rather than a curiosity.

Panama City's Chinatown, near Casco Antiguo, traces back even further, to 1854, when the first Chinese laborers arrived to help build the Panama Railroad under brutal conditions. Later generations of Chinese immigrants built up Panama's retail trade, and the country is home to one of the largest Chinese communities in Central America today — a real, continuing thread in the city's identity that this tour gives proper time to, alongside the postcard stops.