Vigan and the Ilocos coast, the Philippines the Spanish built

Most of the Philippines' Spanish colonial architecture did not survive the twentieth century. Earthquakes, typhoons, fires and, above all, the fighting of the Second World War destroyed much of what the Spanish had built, including most of old Manila. But on the north-west coast of Luzon, in the province of Ilocos Sur, one town came through almost whole. Vigan still has its streets of old houses, its cathedral and its plazas, much as they were in the nineteenth century, and in 1999 UNESCO inscribed the Historic City of Vigan on the World Heritage List.

Around it, the Ilocos coast has more: earthquake-proof baroque churches, an old lighthouse on a headland, windswept beaches and a long tradition of its own.

Vigan

The Spanish came here early. In 1572 the conquistador Juan de Salcedo, sailing north from Manila, founded a town at Vigan and named it Villa Fernandina, after a son of King Philip II. It became a trading town, with a river port where goods from China and elsewhere in Asia were bought and sold, and its merchants grew rich.

They built houses that mixed traditions. The typical Vigan house has a ground floor of thick stone or brick, used for storage and business, and an upper floor of wood with wide windows, their panes made of thin, translucent capiz shells set in sliding wooden frames, which let in light while keeping out the heat. The roofs are steep and tiled. The style, combining Spanish, Chinese and Filipino ideas, is what makes Vigan unlike anywhere else, and it is why UNESCO listed the town.

The heart of it is Calle Crisologo, a cobbled street lined on both sides with these houses, many of them now shops, cafés and small hotels. Horse-drawn carriages, the kalesa, clatter along the stones, and in the evening, when the lamps come on, it is very beautiful. Around it are the cathedral, the plazas, old mansions turned into museums, and pottery workshops where the traditional burnay jars are still made.

Vigan is small enough to walk, and the old quarter is best seen on foot, early in the morning before the heat, or from a kalesa, which can be hired for a slow circuit of the old streets and the churches around them. Either way, look up: the upper floors and their windows are the best of the houses.

The earthquake baroque

North of Vigan, the province of Ilocos Norte has remarkable churches. Best known is the church of San Agustín at Paoay, completed in the early eighteenth century, whose sides are supported by huge buttresses of brick and coral stone, built to hold the walls up in an earthquake. Its bell tower stands apart, so the story goes, so that if it fell it would not bring the church down with it. The style, sometimes called earthquake baroque, is a local answer to a local danger, and Paoay is one of the churches listed by UNESCO as the Baroque Churches of the Philippines.

Further north, near the tip of Luzon, the old lighthouse at Cape Bojeador stands on a hill above the sea, built in the Spanish era to guide ships around the north-west corner of the island. Beyond it, Pagudpud has long beaches on the northern coast, and Laoag, the provincial capital, is the gateway to the region.

The trip

Explore's twelve-night North Philippines Explorer starts in Manila and travels north to Laoag, Paoay, Pagudpud, Burgos and Vigan, before heading into the mountains for Sagada, Bontoc, Banaue, Hapao and Bangaan. It departs from November to May.

Explore's fifteen-night North Philippines Explorer + Bohol Beach Extension follows much the same route, with Cape Bojeador and Batad in its list, and adds time on the island of Bohol at the end.

When to go

The dry season, from about November to May, is the time for the Ilocos coast, which is sunny and hot. It gets very hot in April and May. The rainy season brings typhoons from about June. Stay a night in Vigan if you can, preferably in one of its old houses. In the daytime it is a busy little town; in the evening, when the kalesa have gone home and the lamps light the cobbles of Calle Crisologo, it feels like the nineteenth century again.