After hearing mass at the Church of St. John the Baptist in Calamba City, Jandy Cheska and I crossed over to visit the Rizal Shrine, the birthplace of our National Hero Jose Rizal.  This bahay na bato, the first in Calamba, took two years for Rizal’s father to build. Now a property of the national government and administered and maintained by the National Historical Institute (NHI), this reproduction of the original Spanish Colonial-style, 2-storey house has a red tile roof, thick stone ground floor walls, doors wide enough for a carriage to enter, wooden upper walls of narraand molave and balustrades and capiz shell windows.  

Rizal Shrine

However, we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside.  Its controversial stairway (questioned by old folks to be slightly misplaced saying it should have been a little closer to the wall), with its circular base, leads to the caida (the banquet hall which served as library to Don Francisco and is in turned connected to the sala(living room) by an ornate doorway.  On both sides of the sala are the bedrooms. The house contains replicas of Rizal’s antique family furniture, household articles, library and Rizal memorabilia. Antique items include a very old coffee grinder, a punka (ceiling fan) and a water filter that purifies water from the well.  In the garden are various Philippine fruit trees, an empty stable with a square-shaped calesaon the side and a bronze statue of Rizal as a child done by Duddley Diaz (unveiled on 19 June 1998). The shrine also has a souvenir shop.