The new Rizal Monument

Unusually August 27 to 30, a long vacation, came and go without me and my son Jandy getting out of town due to Typhoon Mina (international name: Nanmadol). Thus, when the sun shone a bit the next day (still no classes for Jandy), we decided to hop into my Toyota Revo and go on a joy ride around Laguna, from Calamba City to Sta. Cruz, photographing historical sites and old churches along the way.Traveling via the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX), I took the Calamba Exit and made our first stopover at Calamba City, the birthplace of National Hero Jose Rizal, by noon.

The Calamba City Hall

Across the modern, 4-storey City Hall (inaugurated on August 16, 2005) along Bacnotan Road, on a 6.7-hectare government property, is the 6.7 m. (22-ft., representing the 22 languages Rizal spoke) high bronze statue of Rizal, said to be the tallest statue of the National Hero anywhere in the world.  The previous one was a 16-ft. high bronze statue, built by naturalized Jordanian philanthropist Mahmoud Asfour, in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya,

It stands on a tiled concrete pedestal mounted on a platform surrounded on all 4 sides by 15-step (representing 150 years) flights of stairs.  Calamba City is also home to the smallest statue of Rizal, a bronze statue of Rizal as a child in the Rizal Shrine,  done by Duddley Diaz and unveiled on June 19, 1998.  The Rizal Shrine is a 10-min. drive from the monument.

Posing beside the plaque

The monument was unveiled, by Pres.  Benigno Aquino III, during the 150th birth anniversary of Rizal  last June 19, 2011.  If measured from its concrete base, the whole monument stands 4 storeys high. The statue, started in December 2010, was designed and executed by 35 year old sculptor Jose Dionas “Jonas” Roces of Marikina City with about a dozen assistants.  Roces also did medium-sized sculpture of Pres. Aquino’s parents, martyred opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. and the late Pres. Corazon Aquino.

NOTE: This Rizal statue was the tallest one from 2011 until 2014 when the 7.93 m. (26 ft.) high bronze Rizal Monument, sculpted by Toym Imao (son of National Artist for Sculpture Abdulmari Asia Imao), was unveiled in Santa Cruz, Laguna for the 2014 Palarong Pambansa  hosted by the province. Depicting Rizal wearing a fencing uniform and holding an epee, it is the only one of its kind in the world.