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| Church of the Immaculate Conception |
After attending the star-studded and colorful Sangyaw Festival of Tacloban City, Jandy and I decided to get some “rest and recreation” at the progressive town of Guiuan in Eastern Samar, our first in the province. To get there, we left the city after lunch, proceeded to downtown and boarded an airconditioned Van-Van van. The trip took just 3 hrs., made possible by the opening, in the late 1990s, of the South Samar Coastal Road which cut land travel time to Guiuan by about 2 hrs.. As usual, we crossed the beautiful, S-shaped San Juanico Bridge (the country’s longest) into Samar, traveling along a coastal highway which runs past mountains, steep cliffs, distant rock islands and boat-filled bays, then making a right at a T-junction (the left goes to Borongan City) to an occasionally potholed asphalt road all the way to Guiuan. We arrived there by 4 PM and were guests at the house of Ms. Vibina “Bebeng” Juaban.
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| San Juanico Bridge |
The best way to explore this coastal town is by hired tricycle. Vestiges of Spanish era history can be seen at the “fortress Baroque” Church of the Immaculate Conception, considered to be the finest in the Eastern Visayas. Started in the 1630s, it was rebuilt in stone in the early 18th century. From 1844 onwards, Fr. Manuel Valverde and Pedro Monasterio renovated the church, covering the roof with tiles. In 1854, Franciscan friars added a transept and baptistery and built a massive bell tower (which once served as a watchtower) on top of a seaside bastion of the fort.
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| The church belfry |
The church’s façade has triple but slim engaged columns, arches and carvings at the pediment’s borders and 3 entrances with elaborately carved, hardwood doors. Inside are a single nave with a main altar and two side altars, a beautiful retablo from Franciscan times, a Rococo frontal with the Augustinian emblem and old santos. The church is enclosed within the partially preserved quadrilateral fort of cut stone, said to be the best and most regularly planned in all the Visayas. Today, this church has been declared as a National Cultural Treasure (unique structures that possess outstanding artistic, historical and cultural values that are significant to the nation), one of 26 named as such by the National Museum in 2001.
