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.
“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.