Cebu is where the Spanish story in the Philippines began, and where the first fight against it was won. This walk covers the ground where both happened. It starts at Fort San Pedro by the harbor, the small stone fort Spain built when it came to stay, and ends at Museo Sugbo, the old provincial jail that now tells the island's story. In between you visit the cross Ferdinand Magellan planted in 1521, pass the basilica of the Santo Niño, step into the cathedral, circle a sculpture that crowds five centuries into one plaza, and wander the old Chinese quarter of Parian with its coral-stone houses. It is about two and a half kilometers and flat the whole way, one of the shorter self-guided walking tours you can do in the Philippines and one of the richest.

Before you set off

The walking itself takes little more than half an hour, but give it a whole morning, because the fort, Casa Gorordo and Museo Sugbo each deserve time inside, and the basilica is worth a quiet sit. Cebu is hot and humid all year. Start early, ideally before nine, carry water and a hat, and duck into the churches and museums when the sun is at its strongest. Heavy showers are common in the wet months, roughly June to November, so a small umbrella earns its place in your bag. The ground is flat, but downtown pavements are narrow, broken in places and often taken over by vendors, so watch your step and cross the busy roads with care, using the lights where there are any. The streets around the basilica fill with worshippers on Fridays, the Santo Niño's devotion day, and in January, during the Sinulog festival, the whole district can be packed. In any crowd, keep your phone and bag close to you. The churches are working places of worship, so cover your shoulders and knees, keep your voice down, and stay at the back if a Mass is under way. The fort and the museums charge small entry fees and keep their own hours, so check before you go.

Fort San Pedro

Stand at the gate of Fort San Pedro and take in the shape of the place. It is a triangle, with two walls facing the sea and the third facing the land, and a bastion at each corner. It is the smallest Spanish fort of its kind in the country and the oldest, because this is where Spain's lasting presence in the Philippines began. In 1565 an expedition led by Miguel López de Legazpi sailed in from Mexico, forty-four years after Magellan's ill-fated visit. The people of Sugbo, as Cebu was then called, did not welcome them. There was fighting, much of the town burned, and the Spaniards dug in on this shore. Their first fort was a stockade of logs and earth, named after Legazpi's flagship, the San Pedro. The stone walls you see came later, raised over the following generations against raiders who came by sea. Cebu was the first Spanish settlement in the islands and Legazpi's base until he moved on, in the end to Manila in 1571. After Spanish rule ended, the fort served the Americans as barracks and the Japanese during the war, and the city has since made it a park. Step inside to walk the ramparts and look out over the harbor where the ferries come in from the other islands. When you are done, leave by the gate and walk north along the edge of Plaza Independencia, past the obelisk raised to Legazpi, then head west toward the city hall. The little pavilion of Magellan's Cross stands in front of it, beside the basilica, about ten minutes from the fort.

Magellan's Cross

Under the small pavilion in front of you stands a tall wooden cross, and on the ceiling above it a painting shows the scene it remembers. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese captain sailing for Spain, reached Cebu in April 1521 on the first voyage to cross the Pacific. The ruler of Sugbo, Rajah Humabon, received him as a trading partner and ally, and about a week later Humabon, his wife and hundreds of his people were baptized. A cross was planted to mark the day. A sign here says the original is sealed inside the wooden one you see, to protect it from pilgrims who once chipped off pieces to keep as relics; historians are less sure how much of it survives. Magellan's welcome did not last. He demanded that the chiefs of nearby Mactan, the island across the channel, submit to Spain, and one of them, Lapulapu, refused. On April 27, 1521, Magellan waded ashore at Mactan with a small force and was killed in the shallows. His fleet limped on without him, and a single ship, under Juan Sebastián Elcano, made it home to Spain in 1522, completing the first voyage around the world. Filipinos remember Lapulapu as the first of their people to turn back a European invader, and the city on Mactan, where Cebu's airport is, now bears his name. Before you go, notice who is here: pilgrims lighting candles, families taking photos, vendors selling candles and rosaries. From the cross, walk north with the walls of the basilica on your left, then jog right at the corner, and in about four minutes the white front of the cathedral appears.

Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral

You have just walked past the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño, and its story belongs here, before the cathedral's. When Legazpi's men came ashore in 1565, a soldier searching a burned house found a small wooden statue of the Christ Child in a box. It was taken to be the very image Magellan had given Humabon's wife forty-four years before, apparently kept by the people of Sugbo all that time. The Augustinian friars built their church on the spot where it was found, and the Santo Niño has been Cebu's most beloved image ever since, the oldest Christian relic in the country. Every January the Sinulog festival fills the city with drums and dancers in its honor, and on any day you will see candle sellers outside the basilica swaying in a slow prayer dance on behalf of their customers. The building in front of you now is Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral, the seat of the archbishop and the mother church of a diocese founded in 1595. Its white facade and the bell tower beside it belong to a church that rose slowly through the Spanish centuries and was badly damaged in the Second World War, then restored in the years that followed. Step in if a service is not under way, and the nave is cool and calm after the streets. The old buildings beside it hold the archdiocese's museum of religious art, worth a look if it is open. From the cathedral, walk north for about five minutes, through the busy blocks of downtown, until a great sculpture rises from a small plaza ahead.