Beyond the karst and the boats, Puerto Princesa keeps Palawan's cultural record: a blue coral-stone cathedral, the provincial museum's Tabon-era jars and Batak bark cloth, a mangrove-side memorial to 143 POWs, and craft villages weaving bariw palm.
Puerto Princesa's landmark 1872 church, rebuilt after WWII in pale blue and white with twin Gothic-arched spires above Rizal Avenue. The interior keeps carved wooden Stations of the Cross and stained glass of Palawan flora. Open 06:00–19:00, Mass hourly Sundays.
The 1950s Capitol on Rizal Avenue is Palawan's best surviving example of post-war Philippine civic architecture — a low white colonnaded block with brise-soleil screens against tropical heat. The lobby holds a mural map of the 1,780-island province.
Small museum near Mendoza Park documenting the Palawan guerrilla battalion and the 1944 Plaza Cuartel massacre — rifles, radio sets, hand-drawn maps and photographs donated by veterans' families. Volunteer guides are often the veterans' grandchildren.
The stone ruins of a Spanish garrison beside the cathedral, where 143 American POWs were burned alive in air-raid tunnels in December 1944. Eleven escaped through the seawall. A quiet memorial garden with plaques and the original tunnel mouths.
The provincial museum in the old city hall holds Tabon Cave-era earthenware, jade ornaments, Palaw'an brass betel boxes, Tagbanua bark manuscripts and a scale model of the Manunggul burial jar. Tue–Sun 08:00–12:00 and 13:00–17:00.
Interpretive centre inside the Provincial Capitol complex with dioramas of Palawan's eleven indigenous groups, recordings of Palaw'an kulilal love songs and basal gong ensembles, and displays of the kudyapi two-string lute and babarak nose flute.
Working handloom studio on the National Highway where weavers turn buri, bariw palm and raffia into placemats and bags on wooden pedal looms. Visitors sit at a loom and weave a strip themselves; the raw fibre is stripped and sun-dried on site.
The seafront promenade's open stage hosts school rondalla string bands, singkil and pangalay dance troupes and amateur singing contests most evenings, with hawker stalls of grilled tamilok-free skewers behind the seating steps.
A century-old open penal colony where inmates farm, live with families in村 barangays and run a handicraft shop selling carved wooden birds and bamboo instruments. No walls, no cells — one of the world's oldest prison-without-bars experiments, founded 1904.
The city's oldest wet-and-dry market, where Cuyonon and Tagbanua traders sell tamban fish, tabon-tabon fruit, hand-rolled tobacco and bundles of bariw palm. The eatery row at the back cooks lato seaweed salad and kinilaw to order.
Palawan's first microbrewery, run by a local family who ferment calamansi and lambanog-inspired ales; the yard doubles as a gallery hanging work by Puerto Princesa painters and hosts acoustic sets by Palaweño songwriters on weekend nights.
A cluster of nipa-and-bamboo workshops north of the centre where families carve wooden tricycle miniatures, weave sawali panels and assemble bamboo kubing jaw harps for the provincial festivals — sold from the front steps of the houses.