Panama Real Estate Blog

One of the most precious assets which reverted to Panama along with the canal when the U.S. pulled out at the end of 1999 was the Amador Causeway which flanks the channel leading into the Pacific entrance to the canal, and joins four small islands, Flamenco, Perico, Culebra and Naos.

Designed as a huge breakwater to protect the entrance to the Canal and prevent sedimentation in the Port of Balboa, the causeway was built with a million and a quarter cubic yards of rock from the excavation of Culebra Cut. It also served as a fortification. Just as the Spaniards had pointed their cannons seaward a few centuries before on the walls of Las Bovedas across the bay, the Americans, during the two world wars, installed ordinance on the causeway islands to make it the most powerful defense complex the world had seen.

The causeway had yet another purpose. Read more

Memories of the society which inhabited Panama City’s Old Quarter when the Republic was young seem still to haunt the narrow streets where, perhaps, spirits of the past are anxious to regain the lost elegance of the early days of the last century. There, in the district of San Felipe or Casco Viejo, lived the illustrious founders of the nation and their families, men such as: Don José Agustin Arango, Dr. Manuel Amador Guerrero, the first president of Panama, Don Constantino Arosemena, Don Nicanor de Obarrio, Don Ricardo Arias, Don Federico Boyd, Don Tomás Arias y Don Manuel Espinosa Batista. Nobody needed an “address” in the Casco Viejo of yesterday. Everybody knew where everybody lived.

Some of the old and well-loved houses of these families are still habitable but sadly affected by the passage of the years. The families formed a close–knit group which met frequently, giving each other a respectful and friendly greeting when they promenaded in the evenings in Independence Plaza, or Cathedral Plaza as it is better known nowadays, or at the famous concerts of the Republican Band which enlivened the square on Sundays and during Read more