Today we went on a tour of Panama City. We’ll talk about most of it in other posts. There was one place we visited, however, that would have been a huge hit with my dad.
The Church of San Jose in Casco Viejo, or La Inglesia de San Jose, is one of the most prominent points of interest in the old city. It is home to the famous Golden Altar.
The Golden Altar is actually made of carved wood that was overlaid with gold flake. The Altar de Oro was originally inside a church in Panama La Vieja. Legend has it that when the English pirate Henry Morgan attacked the city, the Jesuit priests in the Order of St. Augustine painted the Golden Altar black to hide the gold from the pirates. Morgan sacked and burned Panama La Vieja and the Order of St. Augustine moved the altar to the new church in Casco Viejo, its present day location. They say that the friar told Morgan that the altar hadn’t been finished and asked him for a thousand gold doubloons to finish it. Morgan responded that here was a bigger pirate than even him, and gave him the gold.
We’d been in the church the day before, walking around. But on the tour, we went through a back room and came to an amazing…actually, I’m not sure what to call it. We’ll call it a Christmas Village on steroids.
Dad put a lot of effort into his, but this is something else altogether.
