Portobelo (historically Porto Bello in English) is a port city and corregimiento in Portobelo District, Colón Province, Panama with a population of 4,559 as of 2010. Established during the Spanish colonial period, it functions as the seat of Portobelo District. Located on the northern part of the Isthmus of Panama, it has a deep natural harbor and served as a center for silver exporting before the mid-eighteenth century and its destruction in 1739 during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
It slowly rebuilt and the city's economy revived briefly in the late-nineteenth century during construction of the Panama Canal. In 1980 UNESCO designated the ruins of the Spanish colonial fortifications, along with nearby Fort San Lorenzo, as a World Heritage Site, named Fortifications on the Caribbean Side of Panama: Portobelo-San Lorenzo.