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).
The Quezon Memorial Circle (66 hectares, a national urban park encircled by Elliptical Road, with a 66-metre tripartite Art Deco-influenced obelisk containing the remains of President Manuel Quezon and his wife Aurora) is the largest urban park in Metro Manila — the monument (1978, Filipino architect Carlos Arguelles, three pylon shafts symbolising Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao) has a museum at the base; the surrounding park has rose gardens, a bicycle path and is the Sunday morning exercise destination for Quezon City families.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe University of the Philippines Diliman campus (493 hectares, opened 1949, the flagship of the national university system) is a self-contained university town within Quezon City — the AS (Arts and Sciences) Building, the College of Fine Arts galleries (free, showing contemporary Filipino art), the UP Ikot jeepney (the circular campus bus, PHP 15), the UP Shopping Centre, the sunken garden amphitheatre and the Oblation statue (the iconic nude figure with arms outstretched that is the symbol of UP and of Filipino intellectual freedom); the campus is open to the public.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideMaginhawa Street (Teacher's Village, Quezon City) is Metro Manila's most creative neighbourhood — a 1 km strip with art galleries (12 or more independent galleries), experimental restaurants (vegetarian Filipino, Japanese-Filipino fusion, molecular gastronomy), concept stores, live acoustic music venues, thrift shops and the concentration of young Filipino artists, writers, designers and musicians who define contemporary Philippine culture; the Katipunan area adjacent has the Ateneo and Miriam College campuses adding a further intellectual energy.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideTomas Morato Avenue (the dining and entertainment corridor of Quezon City) has the most concentrated fine-dining and craft cocktail bar scene in Metro Manila — Romulo Café (the Philippine heritage food restaurant named after a Filipino diplomat, serving chicken relleno, kare-kare oxtail stew, crispy pata), the craft cocktail bars using Philippine spirits (lambanog coconut wine, Tanduay rum aged in Philippine wood), and the late-night Filipino comfort food stalls open until 3 am.
Intramuros (the Spanish colonial walled city of Manila, 1571-1898, 64 hectares within 5 km of stone walls, 5 km south of Quezon City by LRT) is the most important historical district in the Philippines — Fort Santiago (the military citadel where José Rizal was imprisoned before his 1896 execution), the Manila Cathedral (7th rebuild, 1958, Romanesque), San Agustin Church (1607, the oldest stone church in the Philippines, UNESCO World Heritage) and the bamboo bicycle rickshaw tours of the colonial street grid.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideRizal Park (Luneta, Manila, the 60-hectare national park facing Manila Bay) has the José Rizal Monument (1913, the bronze statue of national hero and writer José Rizal, whose novels Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo sparked Philippine independence consciousness, executed here by the Spanish in 1896 at age 35) — the park is where the Philippine Declaration of Independence from Spain was read; the Manila Bay sunset from Rizal Park is the most famous view in the Philippines.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe National Museum of the Philippines (National Museum of Fine Arts, formerly the old Legislative Building, Manila) houses the most important collection of Philippine art — the centrepiece is Juan Luna's Spoliarium (1884, 4.2 m × 7.7 m oil painting of Roman gladiators dragged to the spoliarium after arena combat, awarded the gold medal at the 1884 Madrid Exposition, and adopted as a symbol of Filipino suffering under colonialism) and the pre-colonial gold collection including the Laguna Copperplate (the oldest known written document found in the Philippines, 900 AD).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideBonifacio Global City (BGC, 15 km south of Quezon City, the modern business district built on the former Fort Bonifacio military camp) is Metro Manila's most walkable, cleanest and most modern district — the street art murals on every building (a city-sanctioned public art programme), the craft beer bars (Joe's Brew, Niner Ichi Nana), the Night Market and the weekend Mercato Centrale food market; the contrast between Spanish colonial Intramuros and the glass-and-steel BGC skyline in one day is the Manila experience in miniature.
Corregidor Island (ferry from Manila, 48 km, 1.5 hrs each way) is the fortified island at the mouth of Manila Bay where the US and Filipino forces made their last stand against the Japanese invasion (January-May 1942) — the Pacific War Memorial (a circular US memorial, 1968), the Malinta Tunnel (the underground command network where General Douglas MacArthur commanded the Philippines before evacuating to Australia), the Japanese Garden of Peace and the ruined barracks are among the most powerful WWII sites in Asia.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Malinta Tunnel (the underground US military tunnel complex on Corregidor, 253 m main tunnel with 25 lateral tunnels, where MacArthur's HQ, hospital and ammunition stores were located during the siege) has the sound-and-light show depicting the 1942 siege; the Battery Way mortar battery (the largest guns used to defend the island, some still in place) and the ruins of the barracks (destroyed in the 1945 US retaking of the island) complete the site.
Tagaytay Ridge (60 km south of Quezon City, 2 hrs by car) sits on a ridge overlooking Lake Taal — a volcanic caldera lake with Taal Volcano Island at its centre (a volcano inside a lake inside a volcano — the outer Taal caldera rim is the Tagaytay Ridge); the view from the ridge is one of the most extraordinary geological landscapes in Southeast Asia; bulalo (the Tagaytay specialty: slow-boiled beef marrow and shank soup) eaten at the cliff-edge restaurants overlooking the volcano is the definitive Tagaytay experience.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe definitive Filipino meal — lechon (whole roasted suckling pig with the crackling skin, the centrepiece of every Filipino celebration, served with liver sauce), sisig (chopped and seasoned pig's face, ears and liver on a sizzling plate with a fried egg on top, invented in Pampanga by Lucia Cunanan, the best bar food in the Philippines), kare-kare (oxtail stew in peanut sauce with banana flower and bagoong shrimp paste), and halo-halo (shaved ice dessert with jackfruit, sweetened beans, ube purple yam and leche flan, topped with a scoop of ube ice cream) — the full Filipino culinary vocabulary in a single feast.