On the eastern edge of modern Panama City, Panamá Viejo preserves the remains of the settlement founded by the Spanish Crown in 1519 as Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Panamá. It was the first permanent European city on the Pacific coast of the Americas, and its position made it a strategic link between ocean routes and the overland crossing of the isthmus. Today the archaeological site is not a replica of the colonial town: visitors move through excavated foundations, standing masonry, streets and the remains of religious and civic buildings. The contrast between the ancient settlement and the modern capital around it is part of the visit.
The place is sometimes confused with Casco Antiguo, the historic district to which the city was moved. They are connected chapters, but different locations. Panamá Viejo is the original archaeological city; the later settlement occupies a peninsula farther southwest. The Patronato Panamá Viejo manages conservation, research and public interpretation at the site. Reading the landscape with that distinction in mind makes the scattered remains easier to understand: these are traces of a city that once organized movement between the Pacific, the Caribbean-facing routes and the Spanish colonial world.