Fort San Lorenzo guards the mouth of the Chagres River from a headland about 30 kilometres west of Colón. The Spanish built the first fort here in 1597 to protect the Camino Real trade route from the Pacific; what remains today — cannon batteries, moats, dry ditches, and bastions cut into the cliff — dates largely from an 18th-century rebuild after English buccaneer Henry Morgan destroyed the original in 1671. The site is a UNESCO World Heritage property and one of the best-preserved pieces of Spanish colonial military engineering in the Americas. The setting alone justifies the drive: the fort overlooks dense jungle on three sides and the Caribbean below. Getting here requires a car; the road passes through the former Canal Zone and into the protected San Lorenzo forest reserve.
Fort San Lorenzo
A story
In 1671 Henry Morgan sacked Fort San Lorenzo en route to his audacious overland raid on Panama City, crossing the isthmus with 1,400 buccaneers through the jungle. The fort's fall opened the river route that allowed his army to reach the Pacific side — the most spectacular act of piracy in Caribbean history.