After our museum visit, we tried, for lunch, one of Iloilo’s famous cuisine, La Paz batchoy at Ted’s at the Provincial Capitol. After lunch, we began the GPS mapping of the rest of the city proper in earnest, making short stopovers at a number of the city’s notable landmarks.
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| Church of St. Joseph |
Fronting the City Hall is Plaza Libertad (formerly Plaza Alfonso XII), at the intersection of De la Rama, Gen. Hughes and Zamora Sts. It was the site where the first Philippine flag was raised, on December 25, 1898, after Spain’s surrender to Gen. Martin Delgado. Across the plaza is San Jose Parish Church, started in 1873 by Augustinian Fr. Mauricio Blanco, who also built the convent. It was spared during World War II. The main altar was gilded with 17,000 gold panels by Fr. Jesus Fernandez. Renovated, from 1980 to 1982, by Fr. Gilbert Centina III, O.S.A.., Romblon marble was used to decorate the transept walls, presbytery, the main and side altar walls and the floors. This 1-storey Byzantine church has 3 naves, a transept and 2 flanking, 3-storey, rectangular bell towers (one of which has a barometer and a clock).
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| Forts San Pedro |
Fort San Pedro, near the mouth of the Iloilo River. Built in 1616 as a defense against enemy raids, it was almost totally destroyed, by naval and air bombardment, during World War II. The Iloilo-Negros Air Express Company (INAEC, founded by Don Eugenio Lopez, Sr. on 3 February 1933), pioneered the first commercial aircraft flight in the country, which took off from a grassy airfield near the fort. Also nearby, at the river’s mouth, is a lighthouse and Rotary Park.
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| Iloilo Port Terminal building |
The city’s port, one of the country’s finest, is protected by Guimaras Island. It handles a considerable volume of rice and sugar shipments. Muelle Loney, the riverfront, with its wharves and warehouses, is a popular promenade named after Nicholas Loney (1826 to 22 April 1859), British vice-consul in Iloilo in 1855 and Father of the Philippine Sugar Industry. Loney established the first trading company in Iloilo and transformed and galvanized the local sugar industry in Negros and Panay by importing British machinery.