Davao City

The Davao Gulf was home to Indigenous peoples — Bagobo, Mandaya, Manobo, Ata and others, alongside Muslim communities along the coast — long before any town existed. In 1848 an expedition led by José Oyanguren took the settlement of the datu Bago at the river mouth for Spain, and a small Christian town was founded on the site, named Nueva Vergara before reverting to Davao, though Spanish control remained thin.

The American period reshaped it. Plantations of abaca — Manila hemp — drew capital and labour, and by the 1930s Davao held a large Japanese community, thousands strong, that dominated the abaca trade and gave the town the nickname Davaokuo. That community was interned or repatriated after the Second World War, during which Davao was occupied early and bombed heavily before liberation. Migrants then poured in from the Visayas and Luzon, encouraged by government settlement schemes, and Davao became a charter city in 1937.

The later 20th century was violent. Communist insurgency and counter-insurgency made parts of the city dangerous in the 1980s, and vigilante groups formed in response. Rodrigo Duterte, first elected mayor in 1988, held the office for most of the next three decades and built a national reputation on strict local rules and a hard line on crime that human rights groups linked to extrajudicial killings; he was elected president in 2016. A bombing at the Roxas Avenue night market in September 2016 killed more than a dozen people and led to a prolonged state of emergency. Since then the city has grown as Mindanao's commercial hub. In March 2025 Duterte was arrested on an International Criminal Court warrant over killings during the drug war and transferred to The Hague, and thousands marched in Davao in protest.

Davao calls itself a city of many peoples, and the claim is grounded. Cebuano is the common language, but its neighbourhoods hold families from every region of the country, alongside eleven Indigenous groups — lumad and Moro — recognised by the city, each with a seat in local governance arrangements. Kadayawan, held every August, is the expression of this: a harvest thanksgiving that has become a celebration of those communities, with street dancing in tribal dress, floral floats and fruit displays filling the centre.

Life here is more ordered than in most Philippine cities, a legacy of decades of strict local ordinances: no smoking in public, a night-time liquor ban, speed limits enforced on the highways, and restrictions on firecrackers that make New Year notably quieter than elsewhere. Residents are generally proud of this, and visitors notice the difference quickly.

Otherwise the culture is recognisably Mindanaoan and Filipino. Catholic parishes organise fiestas and Christmas, mosques serve the Muslim districts, and both calendars are publicly acknowledged. Basketball courts, karaoke, malls and family Sundays fill the social week, and food is the city's favourite subject — durian above all, which Dabawenyos treat as a test of character for outsiders. Politics is followed closely and discussed frankly, though the Duterte family's long dominance of the city remains a sensitive topic with visitors.

Around 1.8 million people live in Davao, spread across a territory of more than two thousand square kilometres — the largest city territory in the Philippines by land area — so that plantations, forest and mountain villages sit inside the same jurisdiction as the downtown. Most residents live in the coastal districts between Toril in the south and Buhangin in the north, and commuting across the city is a long daily business by jeepney or motorbike.

The economy rests on agriculture and trade. The Davao region exports bananas, pineapples, cacao, coconut and durian, the port handles much of Mindanao's shipping, and the city is the region's centre for banking, hospitals, universities and a growing outsourcing sector. Construction has been steady, and malls have become the default public space in the heat.

The day starts before dawn at the markets and on the plantation roads, slows through the middle hours, and picks up again in the evening around food stalls, courts and shopping centres. The city's own concerns are traffic on a road network built for a smaller place, flooding along the river and creeks after heavy rain, water supply, and the balance between a booming fruit trade and the land rights of lumad communities in the uplands. Security checks at entrances are a routine part of the day and barely remarked on.

Davao is a fruit city first. Durian is its emblem, sold in season around Magsaysay Park and along the highways, eaten fresh or turned into candy, ice cream, jam and pastries; pomelo, mangosteen, marang, lanzones and rambutan come from the same orchards, and the region is the country's main source of Cavendish bananas. Malagos and the upland farms have also made Davao a centre for Philippine cacao and chocolate, sold as bars and as tablea for hot drinks.

Seafood from the gulf and from General Santos defines the grill houses: tuna in every form, including the grilled jaw, along with prawns, squid and reef fish. The regional dish is sinuglaw, a combination of grilled pork belly and kinilaw — raw fish cured in vinegar with ginger, onion and chilli — eaten as a starter or with beer. Kinilaw on its own is treated with some seriousness here, judged by the freshness of the fish and the balance of the sour.

Everyday eating is Cebuano and Filipino: adobo, sinigang, grilled chicken and pork on skewers with rice, and silog breakfasts of garlic rice, egg and cured meat. Muslim communities have brought Maranao and Maguindanao cooking to the city, so pastil — rice with shredded chicken or fish wrapped in banana leaf — and dishes seasoned with palapa, the condiment of scallion, ginger, chilli and toasted coconut, are widely sold. Halal restaurants are easy to find, and the night market on Roxas Avenue is where most of it meets in one place.