Businessweek
Why Now Is the Time to Plan a Trip to Flourishing Panama City
New luxury hotels in the old town and lavish seaside resorts are only the most recent reasons to book.
Panama City’s Casco Viejo.
Source: Sofitel Legend Casco Viejo
“You see the big stones?” the hotelier Chris Lenz asks, pointing excitedly toward basketball-size rocks embedded in a row of arches. “Those are from Panama Viejo. They were in another building in the original city, when Columbus visited.”
It’s a sweltering Sunday in July, and the restaurant Santuario is buzzing with well-heeled Panamanians brunching amid restored brick walls and stained glass. But before I can eat, Lenz wants to show me his “living museum,” a sprawling maze of local history sprinkled across the three courtyard-facing wings of his newly opened Hotel La Compañia.