Palacio Bolivar

In 1826, Simón Bolívar organized the Amphictyonic Congress to unite Latin America’s new republics, then never showed up himself, too busy simultaneously running the presidencies of Gran Colombia and Peru. The dream of continental confederation died in this former Franciscan convent, ratified only by Gran Colombia. The building fared better: after fires ravaged it in 1737 and 1756, it became a military barracks, a hospital, and then a school in 1892 when the Piarist Fathers turned the ruins into Balboa National School. Today it houses Panama’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and offers free tours weekdays at 9:30, 11, or 1 p.m.

Balboa National School didn’t last either, closing in 1899 when the Thousand Days’ War got in the way of education. The building kept going anyway: the Christian Brothers moved in as La Salle school in 1904, the same year it hosted the drafting of Panama’s first constitution, then handed off to San Agustín school in 1953, then the Bolívar Institute, which held on until 1999. Only then did anyone let the building stop being a school and start being a ministry.

The neighborhood around it has its own habit of starting over. Casco Viejo exists because Henry Morgan’s pirates burned the original Panama City to the ground in 1671, forcing survivors onto this rocky peninsula to try again. It’s now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is the closest thing pirates have ever gotten to a compliment. The congress united no one. The building, apparently, could not stop trying to.