CEBU CITY (August 8, 2010 5:30 PM) — Museo Sugbo opened two new galleries just this afternoon — one featuring the colorful history of Cebu media and the other one, an art gallery. The National Museum also unveiled two traveling exhibitions featuring Philippine flora (photo above) and a photo gallery of bridges in the Philippines built during the Spanish colonial-era. The museum’s souvenir and coffee shops were also opened during the event. Continue Reading »

A circa-1950s aerial view of Osmeña Boulevard and the Fuente rotunda (Photo Credits: Tomas Ch.Osmeña)

Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama’s call for the rehabilitation of the entire stretch of Osmeña Boulevard reminds us of an earlier movement that shaped some of the cities of the USA and became one of the tools that the Americans used in manifesting her power as a colonial ruler to the Philippines.

The City Beautiful Movement shaped Chicago and so did its influence in the cities of Manila, Cebu, Baguio and Zamboanga. In Cebu City for example, Willam E. Parsons was tasked to draw up a plan for the development of a new city center away from the old Spanish-era center which we now loosely refer today as downtown. Continue Reading »

This is the third of several posts that will feature Richard E. Ahlborn’s photographs of historical churches in Cebu.

Photo courtesy of The Latin American Library, Tulane University, Richard E. Ahlborn Collection. All photos in this post may not be used without first obtaining the written permission of The Latin American Library.

Pardo’s Sto. Tomás de Villanueva Church also had a slightly different and unusual interior as what it is now. Basing on Richard E. Alhborn’s photo of it, there used to be a balcony on each of the four portions of the crossing. The balconies were supported from the floor by columns. I’m not sure what these balconies were really for but it could have just simply functioned as tribunas. Continue Reading »

This is the second of several posts that will feature Richard E. Ahlborn’s photographs of historical churches in Cebu.

Photo courtesy of The Latin American Library, Tulane University, Richard E. Ahlborn Collection. All photos in this post may not be used without first obtaining the written permission of The Latin American Library.

The church of the Nuestra Señora Virgen dela Regla would have been a marvelous sight to behold had it not been literally bulldozed upon the instance of a Dutch missionary in the early 1960s. Unique among all other churches in Cebu, the main facade featured several blind niches in the first and second levels. In the middle at the second level, a niche contained a wooden relief of the Virgin Mary which, fortunately, was saved and now forever rests at the University of San Carlos Museum. Continue Reading »

This is the first of several posts that will feature Richard E. Ahlborn’s photographs of historical churches in Cebu.

Photo courtesy of The Latin American Library, Tulane University, Richard E. Ahlborn Collection. The photo may not be used without first obtaining the written permission of The Latin American Library.

The Sto. Niño Church, now the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño in Cebu City, once had a very different interior as what most people are used to seeing now. The crossing had four huge arches, a very Romanesque feature. Side altar retables or retablos were to be found at each transept. A pulpit with finely carved details was attached to the epistle side of the nave near the crossing while a pipe organ was found at the gospel side near the choir loft. Continue Reading »