The image of the Sto. Niño de Cebu is returned to the then San Agustin Church, now the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño, after being safely kept at the Redemptorist convent during the aerial bombings of World War II. Photo above shows a Redemptorist priest and an Augustinian friar with the image.

(Photo sourced from MacArthur Memorial Museum, Norfolk, Virginia, USA and posted in Skyscrapercity Forums)

I found some vintage photos of Cebu during the 1945 liberation. These photos were from the US National Archives and were uploaded in Flickr, a popular photo uploading website. I’m hoping that through these photos, locals will learn more about what happened to the city during that fateful day.

Below: American soldiers landing in a beach in Talisay. This event is commemorated annually by the city.

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“This is the second of three parts featuring old photos of the Cebu Cathedral…”

Above: An early 1900s photo of the interiors of the cathedral showing the 19th century main altar retablo.

The cathedral of Cebu underwent a lot of changes even during the Spanish colonial times. In the 1930s, the cathedral underwent a major renovation in preparation for the elevation of the then diocese of Cebu into an archdiocese with Gabriel Reyes as the first archbishop. The facade of the cathedral was expanded towards the belfry thus making it look bigger.

Inside, the 19th century retablo was torn down and replaced with a simple altar made of Carrara marble from Italy. Above it were three stained glass windows featuring Jesus Christ at the middle and the archangels Michael and Gabriel on each side side. The chair of the archbishop was then located near the main altar. Continue Reading »

“This is the first of three parts featuring old photos of the Cebu Cathedral…”

The renovation works at the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral in time for the 75th anniversary of the Archdiocese of Cebu on April 28, 2009 is nearing completion. As of this writing, the facade now looks very clean and the plaza has been remodeled and redeveloped. A new comfort room, away from the church, is also now open for public use.

A few weeks from now, a new retablo carved from wood by a Pampanga artist will be installed. Thanks to Fr. Brian Brigoli and the team behind the preparations for the archdiocese’s diamond anniversary, the cathedral has now been brought back to its old grandeur worthy of the title as the seat of the archbishop of one of the greatest archdiocese in the country

In this connection, I will be dedicating three series to commemorate the cathedral of Cebu through the years through vintage photos that show how it used to look before. Continue Reading »

Above: A circa-1960s poster of the Sto. Niño de Cebu.

The Sto. Niño de Cebu is a 16th-century image of the child Jesus that the great explorer Ferdinand Magellan brought with him during his voyage in an attempt to circumnavigate the world. Continue Reading »

Above: The main urban area of Cebu City in the 1950s was then confined to a small area that Cebuanos today refer to as “downtown.”

Mr. Alvin CH. Osmeña, a forumer of Cebu City Forums, was kind enough to share for this blog these vintage aerial photos of Cebu City which were shot by his father, Mr. Tomas CH. Osmeña, who was an avid photographer and pilot. Continue Reading »

Here are some photos that I found in Flickr more than a year ago of Cebu City right after World War II. I tried to search for the account of the one who uploaded these photos so that I can credit him but unfortunately I could no longer locate him. Seems also that he already deleted the photos or set them to private. Like most World War II photos of Cebu, I suspect that these photos came from the archives of a particular university in the USA. Continue Reading »