Vigan

Vigan, on the delta of the Abra River in north-western Luzon, was a trading post before the Spanish came. On 20 May 1572 Spanish forces under Juan de Salcedo marched north from Manila, reaching Vigan on 13 June. Salcedo founded Villa Fernandina de Vigan there.

The town was laid out on a grid under the Spanish Laws of the Indies, with Plaza Salcedo and Plaza Burgos framed by St Paul's Cathedral, the Archbishop's Palace, City Hall and the Provincial Capitol. Its core, the Mestizo district, was home to wealthy families of mixed Chinese and Ilocano descent. Chinese merchants kept shops and storerooms on the ground floor and lived upstairs, behind windows set with panes of capiz shell.

Most of the surviving buildings date from the mid-eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Japanese forces entered the town on 10 December 1941, and in 1945 US and Philippine troops, helped by Ilocano guerrillas, retook it. The town's economy declined after the war. In 1999 an area of 17.25 hectares with 233 historic buildings along 25 streets was inscribed as the best-preserved planned Spanish colonial town in Asia.