By Johnny C. Nuñez / Philippines News Agency
DARAGA, Albay—The National Museum has recently declared world-famous Cagsawa Ruins here a National Cultural Treasure, the highest designation of cultural property in the country. The designation is expected to further boost Albay’s now-booming tourism and expanding local economy.
Albay Gov. Joey Salceda said the declaration by National Museum Director Jeremy R. Barns issued on December 23 and published in the Museum’s web site, affirms the Cagsawa Ruins’s landmark role and significance in the richness of the country’s cultural heritage.
Popularly paired with Albay’s crown jewel, near-perfect cone-shaped Mayon Volcano in postcards, photographs and selfie shots, the 201-year-old ruins—considered as a symbol of the province’s disaster resiliency—also awaits United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (Unesco) recognition as a World Heritage Site. Mayon, itself, is tentatively listed the same Unesco title. Albay, on the other hand, has been nominated for a Unesco Biosphere Area accreditation.
Salceda said the Cagsawa Ruins, as a National Cultural Treasure, is now a priority for protection, preservation and promotion by the national government, an important step toward higher level declarations. The declaration, he added, will further boost the historic-cultural offerings of Albay’s tourism industry. The province is now the fastest-growing destination in the country, and recently won the Pacific Asia Travel Association $1-million CEO Challenge, as a “new frontiers” global destination.
Salceda said Cagsawa Ruins is also the symbol of Albay’s “indomitable spirit and resilience, surviving this far,” from some 201 years ago when Mayon Volcano erupted violently, burying a huge Baroque church and the whole settlement around it in a lahar avalanche and the flashfloods that followed. Over 1,000 residents died in that disaster. Their remains are now only marked by a tumble of bricks and rocks over the layout of a Spanish-era settlement, marked by a world-famous ruins and the top of a church belfry, with the picture-perfect cone-shaped Mayon Volcano in the background.
The Cagsawa Ruins is presently the focal point of Albay’s new tourist destinations, clustered within a 15-kilometer radius, which have recently become favorite sites among tourists. These destinations include the Naglaus-Milaos Underground River and Sigpit Waterfalls with its jumping cliff in Del Rosario village, Jovellar town; the Quitinday Greenhills and caves in Camalig; the Guinanayan White Beach and Island Hopping in Galicia Village, Rapurapu; the Nagaso Hot Spring and Inang Maharang Boiling Lake in Manito; and the Lignon Hill Zip Line, among others.
Albay alone can provide fun and adventure equivalent to a small country, so said Tourism Secretary Ramon R. Jimenez, commenting on the province’s tourism wealth, adding that it “may have less than a million visitors a year but its potential is way beyond” that number.
Barns’s announcement said the declaration highlights Cagsawa Ruins’s importance “to the entire world that the ruins are officially recognized as intrinsic part of the patrimony of the Filipino people and…central to the legacy that the present generations should take special care of.”
A National Cultural Treasure designation pertains to “a unique cultural property found locally, possessing outstanding historical, cultural, artistic and/or scientific value which is significant and important to the country and nation.”
The December 23 declaration of 11 national treasures, “were made as a result of the museum’s “own research, recommendations from government agencies or, in the majority of cases for the 2015, petitions made by property owners or concerned parties,” the announcement added.
1 comment
The issue on the continuous upsurge of cultural affairs in this environment is logically universal for people. Human race in the surge is like a cannon ball to flew far away in terms of introspect for ritual and glorious aspect of a different remedies in the psycho-social matters of human mentality. Towards the growth of an expectant lacquer of attitudes. The difference of purity of conscience from a neutral tranquility of verge of people is much of an effaced to the theory of feminism that only women should have a gain of respect. Much in the sense of birth rate the culture that is in the haste could be merge with an organized pluralistic essences.