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Two blocks west along Av A from the corner with C 1 stands the ruined Church and Convent of Santo Domingo , completed in 1678 and famous for the Arco Chato (flat arch) over its main entrance. Only 10.6m high, the arch spans some 15m with no external support, and was reputedly cited as evidence of Panama's seismic stability when the US Senate was debating where to build an interoceanic canal. In the chapel next door the absorbing Museo de Arte Religioso Colonial (Tues-Sat 9am-4.15pm; US$0.75) has a small collection of religious paintings, silverwork and sculpture from the colonial era. Four blocks west along Av A is the ruined shell of La Compania , a Jesuit church and university completed only eighteen years before the Society's expulsion from all Spanish America in 1767. Only the walls and ornate facade still stand. A block further west on the corner with C 8 is the Church of San Jose , built in 1673 but since remodelled, exceptional only as home to the legendary baroque Golden Altar , one of the few treasures to survive Henry Morgan's sacking of Panama Viejo in 1671 - it was apparently painted or covered in mud to disguise its true value. One block beyond San Jose, Av A emerges onto Plaza Herrera , a pleasant square lined with elegant nineteenth-century houses, some with cast-iron balconies imported during the French canal construction. This was originally the Plaza de Triunfo, where bullfights were held until the mid-nineteenth century, but was renamed in 1922 in honour of General Tomas Herrera, whose statue stands in its centre. Herrera was the military leader of a short-lived independence attempt in 1840; he went on to be elected president of Colombia but was assassinated before taking office in Bogota in 1854. Just off Plaza Herrera to the west stands The Tiger Hand Bastion , a crumbling and indistinct pile of masonry that is the last remaining section of the city's defensive walls on the landward side. The walls came to symbolize the class divide between wealthy San Felipe residents and the poorer neighbourhood of Santa Ana, and were largely dismantled in the mid-nineteenth century.
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