Panama Canal Museum
The story of the canal, from the failed French attempt to the 1999 handover, on the main square.
The Museo del Canal Interoceánico occupies an elegant building on Plaza de la Independencia that began life as the Grand Hotel and later served as headquarters of the French company that first tried to dig the canal.
Its exhibits trace the canal's history: the French effort and its enormous human cost, the American construction, life in the Canal Zone, the treaties that followed and the transfer of the canal to Panama in 1999. It's the best single place in the city to understand why Panama looks the way it does.
