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Philippines

4 city guides · Asia

Cities in Philippines (4)

Asia
🇵🇭 Philippines

Cebu City

Cebu City (population 950,000 city, 2.9 million metropolitan area) is the oldest city in the Philippines (founded 1565 by the Spanish conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi — the most historically important Spanish settlement in the Philippines and the first Spanish colonial city in Southeast Asia) and the Queen City of the South (the most important regional capital in the Visayas and Mindanao). The Magellan's Cross (1521 — planted by Ferdinand Magellan on the spot where the first Filipinos were baptised as Christians — the most important single Catholic relic in the Philippines) and the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño (home to the oldest Catholic icon in the Philippines: the Santo Niño de Cebu (the image of the Child Jesus gifted by Magellan to the Queen of Cebu in 1521)) make Cebu the most important Catholic pilgrimage destination in Southeast Asia. The city is surrounded by the most beautiful island-hopping waters in the Philippines — the Visayan Sea islands (Malapascua, Camotes, Bantayan), the whale sharks of Oslob (the most important whale shark tourism site in Asia) and the Kawasan Falls of Badian (the most beautiful waterfall-canyoneering destination in the Philippines). Cebu lechon (the whole roasted suckling pig — the most important single pork dish in the Philippines) is the most internationally acclaimed regional Filipino food.

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🇵🇭 Philippines

Manila

Manila is one of the world's great chaotic megacities — a place of astonishing contrasts where the walled Spanish colonial city of Intramuros stands blocks from Asia's largest casino complex, where jeepney art-cars painted in chrome and religion navigate traffic jams beneath elevated expressways, and where 14 cities have merged into a single Metro Manila of 25 million people without entirely losing their individual characters. The Philippine capital has been sacked, bombed flat in 1945 (one of the most destructive battles of the Pacific War), rebuilt and reinvented repeatedly — yet the Rizal Monument, the 16th-century San Agustín Church and the Pasig River estuaries survive as anchors of continuity. Beyond Intramuros, Binondo is the world's oldest Chinatown (1594); the Bangkerohan wet markets sell bizarre tropical fruit; and Bonifacio Global City (BGC) — carved from a former US military base — is the gleaming, walkable neighbourhood that suggests what Manila's future might look like.

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Puerto Princesa

Puerto Princesa is the capital of Palawan province in the Philippines and the gateway to the island of Palawan — consistently ranked as the world's best island by Condé Nast Traveler readers (2013, 2017, 2020) for its extraordinary combination of limestone karst landscapes, turquoise water, pristine coral reefs, dense jungle and the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River (the New Seven Wonders of Nature, UNESCO World Heritage) — an 8.2 km underground river that flows directly from a limestone mountain into the South China Sea, navigable by paddle boat for 4.3 km. The island of Palawan (650 km long, 50 km wide) is the least densely populated province in the Philippines and is often described as the country's "Last Frontier" — the endemic Palawan wildlife (the Palawan peacock-pheasant, the Palawan bearcat, the Philippine crocodile, the Irrawaddy dolphin and the dugong) survives in the marine protected areas and the Saint Paul Mountain Range. Puerto Princesa city (280,000) itself is one of the cleanest cities in the Philippines — it won the International Best Practice Award from the United Nations for waste management; littering is illegal and the city has an active 'eco-tourism police' force. The Tubbataha Reef Natural Park (UNESCO, 180 km southeast of Puerto Princesa) is one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems in the world and accessible only by liveaboard dive vessel during the March-June season — it has the highest fish biomass of any reef in the world. From Puerto Princesa, the route north to the El Nido archipelago (240 km, 6 hrs by van or 1 hr by chartered plane) opens the extraordinary limestone karst lagoon islands of the Bacuit Archipelago, which National Geographic named the most beautiful seascape in Asia.

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🇵🇭 Philippines

Quezon City

Quezon City is the most populous city in the Philippines with 2.9 million people (and the greater Metro Manila area's largest component city) — named after Manuel Quezon, the first President of the Philippine Commonwealth (1935-1944), who designated it as the nation's new capital in 1948 to replace Manila; however, in 1976 Marcos moved the capital designation back to Manila, leaving Quezon City as the largest city in the Philippines that is not the official capital. The city is the administrative and cultural heart of Metro Manila — the Philippine Senate, the House of Representatives and the headquarters of the Commission on Elections are all in Quezon City; so are the headquarters of ABS-CBN and GMA Network (the two dominant Philippine television networks), the University of the Philippines Diliman (UP Diliman, the flagship campus of the national university system), and the Quezon Memorial Circle (a 66-hectare national park and shrine with the remains of President Manuel Quezon and his wife in a 66-metre Art Deco-influenced monument). The city has three defining experiences that distinguish it from Manila: the Maginhawa Street food and art hub (the most creative neighbourhood in Metro Manila, with art galleries, experimental restaurants, live music venues, and the community of young Filipino artists and intellectuals), the UP Diliman campus (a vast university town within the city with modernist architecture, a lagoon, the College of Fine Arts galleries and the best bookshops in the Philippines) and the Night Market strip of Tomas Morato Avenue (the dining, cocktail bar and late-night culture zone of Quezon City's middle class).

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