Casco Viejo's street art scene
Casco Viejo has developed one of the most significant street art scenes in Central America over the past fifteen years — driven by the neighbourhood's unusual combination of crumbling colonial walls (ideal large canvases), a creative community of young Panamanian artists who moved in as rents were still affordable, and an informal tolerance from building owners who preferred a mural to a blank deteriorating facade.
The murals cluster in two zones: the historic core, where work tends toward culturally referential subjects — Panamanian history, indigenous motifs, canal imagery — and the transitional streets to the north and east of the main tourist area, where the work is rawer, more political, and changes more frequently as buildings are renovated and new artists claim walls.
Unlike the curated street art programs in cities like Bogotá or Valparaíso, Casco Viejo's mural scene is largely organic. Individual artists negotiate directly with building owners, sometimes in exchange for money, sometimes for permission alone. The result is less uniform but more authentic — a neighbourhood that looks like art happened to it, rather than art that was installed for visitor benefit.
Must-see murals
Near Avenida Central · History
The Guna Yala Cosmology Mural
A large-format work created in collaboration with Guna community artists, depicting figures from Guna spiritual cosmology in the bold colour palette of traditional mola textile art — deep red, electric turquoise, black, and white. The mural extends across two building facades at the corner where the commercial neighbourhood meets the historic quarter. The Guna spiritual world — the nele (shaman), the mola nae (fabric spirits), the layered cosmos of the Guna universe — is rendered in a style that bridges traditional textile design and large-scale mural painting. One of the most significant cultural artworks in Casco Viejo.
Calle 7a · Scale
The Geometric Facade
An entire four-storey building face painted in interlocking geometric patterns derived from both mola textile traditions and Pacific coast Colombian basketry. The work was executed over three weeks by a team of Panamanian and Colombian muralists. At the right time of day — late afternoon when the west-facing wall catches direct sunlight — the colours achieve an intensity that is almost overwhelming. Photographically extraordinary from the opposite side of the street.
Near French Embassy · Memory
Canal Worker Memorial
A figurative mural depicting the largely forgotten West Indian and French workers who died during the failed French canal attempt of the 1880s — an estimated 20,000 deaths from yellow fever and malaria in less than a decade. The work is painted in a deliberately faded palette suggesting age and forgetting, with faces of individual workers emerging from a landscape of excavation and jungle. A historically significant piece that most tourist-focused walking tours don't reach.
Plaza Santa Ana adjacent · Urban
The Market Life Series
A series of smaller murals spread across three connected buildings depicting scenes of market life in the Santa Ana district adjacent to Casco Viejo: vendors, transport workers, schoolchildren, an elderly man reading a newspaper outside a barber shop. The style is documentary realism painted at twice life size — these are specific people from the neighbourhood, portrayed with evident dignity and affection. The muralist has returned annually to add new figures to the series.
Sea wall area · Wildlife
The Harpy Eagle
Panama's national bird — the harpy eagle, the largest and most powerful eagle in the Americas — rendered at full three-storey scale on the exterior wall of a building near the sea wall. The detail work is exceptional: individual feathers, the characteristic double crest, eyes that seem to track movement as you walk past. The harpy eagle is endangered in much of its range; this mural is both a celebration and a conservation statement. Local artists know this wall as "el águila."
The mural walking route — 90 minutes
Self-guided mural route (approximately 2.5 km)
Artists to know
Ras Inca is Panama's most prolific and internationally recognised muralist — his work appears throughout Casco Viejo and in cities from Medellín to Mexico City. His style combines Afro-Caribbean iconography with urban realism, executed with a technical facility in spray paint that produces photographic-quality portraiture at scale. Follow him on Instagram for current locations of new work.
Colectivo Mola is a collective of Guna and non-Guna artists who collaborate on large-scale works incorporating mola textile patterns into mural format — including the Guna Yala Cosmology piece. Their work consistently asks questions about cultural representation and what it means for indigenous visual language to appear in an urban context.
Several Colombian muralists — drawn to Casco Viejo's affordable studio spaces and active arts scene in the 2010s — have left significant work in the neighbourhood. The Geometric Facade was led by a Bogotá-based collective that continues to return for annual additions to the work.
The murals change. Building renovation is continuous in Casco Viejo — a mural painted on a facade that is subsequently restored or sold may disappear without notice. The works described here have been stable for several years, but check recent Instagram posts from Casco Viejo arts accounts before planning a specific visit around any one piece.
Tips for the mural walk
- Go in the afternoon. Most of the significant murals face west or north — afternoon light (2–5pm) illuminates them directly. Morning is better for the east-facing pieces on Avenida A.
- Walk slowly. The best murals are not always on the main streets. Look down passages, into alcoves, across rooftops. Casco Viejo rewards the person who is not in a hurry.
- Use Instagram as a live map. Searching the hashtag #CascoViejoArte or #CascoViejoPanama will show you what local artists have posted recently — often with location tags that are more accurate than any printed guide.
- Don't limit yourself to murals. Several galleries in Casco Viejo — particularly in the buildings along Avenida A — show work by the same artists who paint the neighbourhood's walls. Galleries are free to enter and often have the artists present on Thursday evenings.
Walk Casco Viejo with a guide who knows the full story
Our walking tours cover the neighbourhood's art scene alongside its history — connecting the murals to the culture, the buildings to the people, the streets to the 350 years of Panamanian life that made them.
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