Plaza de Francia

The Plaza de Francia features a tall stone obelisk rising eighteen meters high, topped with a bronze gallic rooster. This square, located at the southern tip of the Casco Viejo district, occupies a space that functioned as a military parade ground for centuries. It was redesigned into this monumental form in nineteen twenty-one, during the presidency of Belisario Porras, to honor the thousands of workers who perished during the French attempt to construct the Panama Canal in the late nineteenth century.