Iglesia Santo Domingo and the Arco Chato in Panama City
PANAMA CITY, Panama – The Iglesia Santo Domingo in Casco Viejo is mostly crumbling ruins but is best known for its Flat Arch spanning the interior. The arch stood without visible supports for roughly 250 to 300 years after fires in 1737 and 1756 left the church roofless, and it collapsed in November 2003. What visitors see today is a 2007 reconstruction built around a concealed modern core and re-faced in salvaged colonial brick.
The Iglesia Santo Domingo (or Church and Convent of Santo Domingo) isn’t much to look at anymore. It has long been a shell of brick ruins. There’s no roof, and while there are still walls, they’re mostly crumbling. It was completed around 1678, and fires in 1737 and 1756 burned away the wooden roof, leaving the church in ruins. It has been in ruins ever since.
But the most famous aspect is the Arco Chato, or Flat Arch, that spans from one side to the other, at about 35 feet high and spanning 49 feet. There aren’t any obvious supports, and the fact that it remained standing was one of the things that local advocates pointed to when talking up Panama City’s seismic stability when the choice for where to build a canal linking the Pacific and Atlantic oceans was down to a choice between Panama and Nicaragua.
The Flat Arch did eventually fall — on the night of 7 November 2003 — and was reconstructed between 2005 and 2007, reopening in 2007. The reconstruction was built around a concealed modern internal core and re-faced in salvaged colonial brick, since an exact like-for-like rebuild was impossible.
PANAMA CITY, Panama — A closer view of the Arco Chato (Flat Arch) within the roofless ruins of the Iglesia y Convento de Santo Domingo in the Casco Antiguo. Built of fired brick without iron ties or visible buttressing, this depressed “arco rebajado” of three centers once supported the upper choir floor at the rear of the church’s single wide nave. The Dominican church and convent were completed around 1678 on the relocated colonial city’s Avenida A, and fires in 1737 and 1756 burned away the wooden roof, isolating the arch amid the gutted walls. What visitors see today is a 2007 reconstruction built around a concealed modern internal core and re-faced in salvaged colonial brick — the original arch having collapsed on 7 November 2003 after roughly 250 to 300 years standing. The ensemble is part of the UNESCO World Heritage property “The Colonial Transisthmian Route of Panama,” inscribed in 2025, with the Casco Antiguo as a component part, and the adjacent chapel houses the Museo de Arte Religioso Colonial. Photo by David Coleman / Have Camera Will TravelLicense this image at:DirectlyAlamy
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XF28+JM6, Panama City, Panama
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