La Merced Church

Someone should submit La Merced Church, in the historic district of San Felipe, to the Guiness Book of Records as the luckiest building in the world.

The church has stood in its present location since 1673, but it is the resurrection of the La Merced church located formerly in Old Panama, some ten kilometers to the east.

The original church in Old Panama was built in the 16th century and survived a number of fires and earthquakes before the final plundering of the city by English privateer, Sir Henry Morgan, in 1671. La Merced, which was one of the few buildings not affected by the subsequent fire (ordered by the city's governor, Juan Pérez de Guzmán) served as headquarters of Morgan's forces during their month-long stay.

When Spanish authorities ordered the relocation of the city to present-day San Felipe, black slaves underwent the painstaking task of removing La Merced's baroque-style façade stone by stone to re-assemble it in its present location, where it has survived the "small fire" and "big fires",which almost destroyed San Felipe in the 18th century, as well as the 1880 earthquake.

The first La Merced church has an enormous historic significance. It was there that, in 1531 Francisco Pizzarro and Diego de Almagro took Holy Communion before setting sail to conquer the rich Inca empire, in Perú.