Panama City
— — a skyline rising out of the isthmus.
Not only on a wall.
“A capital that holds three cities at once. The ruins of Panamá Viejo from 1519, sacked by Henry Morgan in 1671 and left as stone. Casco Viejo, the colonial replacement, with its balconies and cathedral square. And the modern banking towers along the Cinta Costera, watching ships queue for the canal locks at Miraflores just up the bay. from the studio
Panama City, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Panama City sits on the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal, at the south end of the isthmus that joins North and South America. The capital was founded as Panamá Viejo on August 15, 1519, by Pedro Arias Dávila, making it the oldest European settlement on the Pacific coast of the Americas. After the 1671 sack by Henry Morgan the city was rebuilt about eight kilometres west at the site now called Casco Viejo. Greater Panama City holds about 1.9 million people, roughly half the country's population.
Casco Viejo, the colonial old town founded in 1673, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 together with the Panamá Viejo ruins. The district holds the Catedral Metropolitana from 1796, the Iglesia de San José with its gilded baroque altar, and the Teatro Nacional from 1908. The modern skyline along Avenida Balboa runs the other direction: more than 70 towers above 150 metres, including the F&F Tower with its 242-metre spiralled green glass and the Trump-built JW Marriott at 284 metres.
The Panama Canal opened on August 15, 1914, the same date as the city's founding 395 years earlier. The Miraflores Locks lift Pacific-bound ships about 16.5 metres in two stages and sit roughly 12 kilometres from downtown. A second, larger set of locks at Cocolí opened in 2016 to carry Neopanamax vessels, doubling the canal's capacity. Casco Viejo and the Cinta Costera promenade both look out on the same shipping anchorage where vessels queue for their transit slot, sometimes thirty deep on a clear morning.