My first impression of Panama City’s Casco Viejo was one of distortion. It was only possible to catch fragmented glimpses of its whitewashed walls through reflections cast out by skyscrapers lining the waterfront. Panama City’s old town seemed awkward and incongruous, positioned in the shadow of five-hundred-foot-tall buildings. Its pristine streets lay relatively abandoned, disconnected from the chaotic metropolis barely one kilometre away. This sense of dislocation and frag