Three days in Vigan: the Spanish town in Asia that the bombs missed
Two nights in the Mestizo District, with the cobbled street and the ancestral houses on foot and a hilltop belfry across the river.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Vigan
- Places
- 7 across 3 days
Almost every Spanish colonial town in the Philippines was destroyed in the Second World War. Vigan was not, and the reason usually given is that the Japanese commander here surrendered the town rather than defend it, so the American bombers were called off. Whatever the cause, the result is a grid of sixteenth-century streets with about two hundred original houses still standing on it, which UNESCO listed in 1999.
The houses are not Spanish exactly. They were built by Chinese traders who married into local families and got rich shipping indigo and gold out of the Ilocos coast, so the plan is Chinese, the upper storey is Filipino tropical hardwood with sliding shell windows, and the ornament is Mexican and Spanish. Nowhere else in Asia has a whole town of them.
It is small. Two nights covers the streets, the two house museums, the belfry over the river and the pottery workshops, and leaves time for the thing Vigan is loved for domestically, which is a deep-fried orange empanada eaten standing up in a plaza.
Highlights
- Calle Crisologo after dark, cobbled, lantern-lit and closed to everything but horse carts
- The Syquia Mansion, a president's town house with the family's furniture still in it
- Bantay belfry on its hill, built apart from its church so it could double as a lookout
- Burnay jars, still thrown on a wheel one man turns with his foot while another shapes the clay
- Vigan empanada, orange from annatto, filled with a whole egg and local sausage
Where to stay
Vigan, two nights
Stay inside the Mestizo District, ideally in one of the ancestral houses that have been turned into hotels. The rooms are wooden-floored, high-ceilinged and often furnished with the original beds, and you are then thirty seconds from the cobbles.
There are cheaper modern places on the ring roads and there is no reason to use them; the heritage hotels are not expensive by any standard. Book ahead for weekends and for either festival.
Day by day
Day 1 in Vigan
The cathedral, the plaza and the street after dark
The town is laid out the way the Laws of the Indies told Spanish colonial planners to lay one out: a church on a square, government buildings around it, merchant houses on a grid behind. Start at the cathedral, which was rebuilt in 1800 in what is called earthquake baroque, meaning squat, buttressed and low enough to survive a shake.
Between the cathedral and the old government house is the plaza where the Spanish burned a local heroine of the 1763 revolt, and where there is now an unlikely musical fountain that plays in the evening.
Then Calle Crisologo. It is closed to motor traffic, paved in cobbles, lined for four hundred metres with two-storey merchant houses, and lit by lanterns after dark. It is at its best at seven in the evening or seven in the morning, and considerably less good at midday with a coach party in it.
- 16:00
St. Paul's Metropolitan Cathedral
VisitBuilt by the Augustinians around 1790 with buttresses thick enough for the fault line underneath. Look for the Chinese fu dogs flanking the facade, put there by the Chinese craftsmen who built it.
- 17:00
Plaza Salcedo (Luneta Park Musical Dancing Fountain)
LandmarkThe square west of the cathedral, with a monument to Gabriela Silang, who led the revolt of 1763 and was hanged here. The dancing fountain runs at half past seven most evenings.
- 18:00
Calle Crisologo
VisitWalk it twice, once at dusk and once after the lanterns come on. The ground floors are now shops and the upper storeys are still shell-windowed and largely original. Kalesas wait at the north end.
- 19:30
Insiang's Empanada
EatA stall by the plaza where the empanadas are folded and fried in front of you. Order one with egg and longganisa, take the vinegar, and eat it standing up.
With more time: Plaza Burgos next door fills with food carts in the evening and is where the town actually eats. The Mestizo District behind Calle Crisologo is quieter and has as many good facades with nobody photographing them.
Day 2 in Vigan
Two family houses, and a belfry on a hill
The two house museums here are the point of Vigan, and they are different from each other. The Syquia Mansion belonged to the family the sixth president of the Philippines married into, and it is a grand town house with a ballroom, a chapel and the president's own effects. The Crisologo Museum belonged to a congressman shot dead while hearing mass in the cathedral in 1970, and the bloodstained car and the bullet-marked window are both still there, which makes it a stranger and more affecting visit.
In the afternoon, cross the river to Bantay, four kilometres north, where a red brick belfry stands on a hill apart from its church because it was built to watch for raiders coming up the coast. You can climb it, the bells are still rung by hand, and the view runs to the sea.
- 09:00
Syquia Mansion
VisitGuided tours only, running every half hour, closed Mondays. The kitchen, the chapel and the presidential memorabilia upstairs are the good parts. About an hour.
- 11:00
Crisologo Museum
VisitA short walk south, run by the family, small entrance fee. The rooms are left as they were in 1970, down to the desk and the vehicle in the yard, and there is no interpretation at all, which is part of the effect.
- 12:30
Bagnet for lunch
EatTwice-fried pork belly with pinakbet and a plate of rice, at one of the restaurants on the plaza. Ask for sugarcane vinegar with chilli and garlic in it.
- 16:00
Bantay Watchtower
ArchitectureTen minutes north by tricycle. Climb the stair inside for the coastal view, and go up in the last hour of light. There is a small donation box at the top.
With more time: The church beside the belfry, Bantay's own, is a heavy Spanish-era pile with a shrine to Our Lady of Charity inside, and the two together take an hour. Quema House back in town is considered by architectural historians the most representative of the Vigan merchant houses.
Day 3 in Vigan
The jar makers, then the bus south
Vigan has been making burnay since before the Spanish arrived. The clay is mixed with fine sand, thrown on a wheel that a second potter turns with his foot, and fired in a long brick kiln built into a slope, which is a Chinese technique brought by the same traders who built the houses. The jars are still used across the Ilocos for storing vinegar, fish sauce and rice wine.
The workshops let you watch, and let you try the wheel, and sell the results for very little. Then take one more empanada and get the bus, because everything from here is a long way.
- 08:30
RG Jar Factory
VisitTen minutes from the centre. Open from morning, no ticket, and the potters will put you on the wheel if you ask. The dragon kiln at the back is fired every few weeks.
- 10:30
Last empanada and coffee
EatPlaza Burgos again, and buy a bag of longganisa or a bottle of sugarcane vinegar to take with you; both travel and neither is sold well outside the Ilocos.
- 12:00
Bus out
TravelThe terminals are on the edge of town, ten minutes by tricycle. Manila is eight to ten hours, Laoag and its airport about ninety minutes north, Baguio five hours east.
With more time: With longer, Camangaan on the edge of town is where the abel weavers work their wooden looms, and the Padre Burgos house on the plaza is a small national museum in the birthplace of one of the three priests executed in 1872, whose deaths did as much as anything to start the revolution.
Before you go
Getting there
Vigan is 400 kilometres north of Manila and the standard way in is an overnight bus, eight to ten hours, from the Cubao or Sampaloc terminals. The deluxe services have reclining seats and a toilet and are worth the extra few hundred pesos.
There is a small airport at nearby Laoag with flights from Manila, then an hour and a half by van south. Coming from Baguio it is about five hours across the mountains, which is a fine drive and a rough bus.
Getting around
The heritage core is six streets and you walk it. For anything beyond, take a kalesa, the horse-drawn carriage that is still a working taxi here, or a tricycle, which is a motorbike with a sidecar and costs almost nothing.
Kalesa drivers offer a fixed loop covering the belfry, the pottery and the outlying churches for a few hundred pesos an hour. Agree the price and the stops before you get in.
When to come
November to April is dry. The Viva Vigan festival in the first week of May fills the streets with parades, and the Longganisa festival in late January does the same with sausage. Both are worth planning around or avoiding.
Weekends bring Filipino visitors by the coachload and Calle Crisologo can be shoulder to shoulder in the evening. Midweek it is close to empty and much better.
Eating
Ilocano food is the saltiest and most vegetable-heavy in the Philippines. Bagnet is pork belly boiled then deep fried twice until the skin shatters; pinakbet is vegetables stewed with fermented fish paste; longganisa here is a fat garlicky sausage rather than the sweet Manila kind.
The empanada is the thing. Rice flour pastry coloured orange with annatto, filled with green papaya, longganisa and a raw egg cracked in before it is folded and deep fried, eaten with sugarcane vinegar. Two of them is lunch and they cost under a pound each.
Vigan is a small town that got lucky, and it knows it. There is one famous street, two family houses that have not been tidied up for visitors, a belfry with a view of the sea, and a potter turning a wheel with his foot the way his grandfather did.
Come midweek, stay in one of the old houses, and walk the cobbles at seven in the morning before anybody else is up.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- How long do you need in Vigan?
- Two nights. The heritage core takes half a day, the house museums and the belfry another, and the pottery a morning. Anyone doing it as a day stop on the way north is seeing the street and nothing else, and the street is better after dark anyway.
- How do I get to Vigan from Manila?
- An overnight bus, eight to ten hours, leaving in the evening and arriving at breakfast, which saves a night's accommodation. Or fly to Laoag and drive ninety minutes south. There is no railway.
- Why did Vigan survive when the rest did not?
- The usual account is that the Japanese garrison here withdrew or surrendered rather than fight street by street, so the American air raids that flattened Manila and most of the northern towns were never called in. Whatever the reason, about two hundred original houses came through the war, which is why UNESCO listed the town in 1999.
- What should I eat in Vigan?
- The empanada, at least twice, from a stall rather than a restaurant. Then bagnet, the deep-fried pork belly, pinakbet, and the garlic longganisa sausage. Ilocano cooking is salty and vinegary and it goes well with the heat.
- What else is in the north?
- Laoag and the Paoay church, another earthquake baroque UNESCO site, are ninety minutes north; the sand dunes at Ilocos Norte are beside them. Baguio and the Cordillera rice terraces are east through the mountains. Copy this into the planner and build the northern loop around it.