The Visayas

The Visayan islands were trading chiefdoms linked to China and the Malay world when Ferdinand Magellan arrived in 1521. The first Mass on Philippine soil is traditionally placed at Limasawa, off southern Leyte; in Cebu, Rajah Humabon was baptised and given the image of the Santo Niño, and soon after Magellan was killed at Mactan by Lapu-Lapu. Miguel López de Legazpi returned in 1565 and founded Cebu, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the islands, before moving on to Panay and then Manila.

In the 19th century, the opening of Iloilo's port to foreign trade in 1855 and the work of the British vice-consul Nicholas Loney turned western Visayas into sugar country. Iloilo became the second city of the colony and Negros was cleared into vast haciendas, whose owners built the mansions of Silay and Iloilo. In 1898 Negros rose against Spain on 5 November and briefly formed its own republic. Under American rule, Filipino fighters in Samar ambushed a US garrison at Balangiga in 1901, and American reprisals followed; the church bells taken as trophies were returned only in 2018.

In October 1944 American forces landed on Leyte at Palo, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf followed. After independence the Visayas supplied labour to sugar and to Mindanao's frontier, and Imelda Marcos came from Leyte's Romualdez political dynasty. Typhoon Haiyan, called Yolanda, killed more than 6,000 people in November 2013, most of them in Eastern Visayas; weeks earlier an earthquake had wrecked Bohol's old churches. In 2018 Boracay was closed for six months for an environmental clean-up, and in 2024 Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental and Siquijor were grouped into a re-established Negros Island Region, so the Visayas now span four administrative regions.

The region speaks Visayan languages rather than Tagalog. Cebuano, widely called Bisaya, is spoken in Cebu, Bohol, Negros Oriental and Siquijor and is by far the most widely spoken of the Visayan languages; Hiligaynon, or Ilonggo, famously soft in tone, dominates Iloilo and Negros Occidental; Waray is the language of Samar and Leyte; and Kinaray-a and Aklanon are spoken on Panay. Cebuanos and Ilonggos share a friendly rivalry, and Visayans in general are known for music, humour and hospitality.

January is festival month. Cebu's Sinulog honours the Santo Niño with street dancing to drums, Kalibo's Ati-Atihan has participants imitating the Ati, the islands' earlier inhabitants, and Iloilo's Dinagyang follows. Bacolod's MassKara, begun in 1980 during a time of hardship, puts smiling masks on the streets in October, and Tacloban holds the Pintados festival, recalling the tattooed warriors the Spanish described.

Crafts include guitars made on Mactan, hablon weaving in Iloilo, and piña, the fine cloth woven from pineapple-leaf fibre, in Aklan. Siquijor is known across the country for its folk healers and for tales of sorcery, and some visitors seek out its herbal healers. Catholic devotion runs deep, and the old coral-stone churches remain the centres of town life.

Metro Cebu, the largest metropolitan area in the Visayas and the country's third-largest, is a hub for shipping, manufacturing, call centres and tourism. Iloilo, with about 450,000, and Bacolod, with about 600,000, are the western cities; Tacloban, recovered from Haiyan, is the east's centre; and Dumaguete, around 130,000, is a university town built around Silliman University.

Sugar still shapes Negros and parts of Panay, worked by seasonal cane-cutters called sacadas; coconuts, rice and fishing sustain Samar and Leyte. Tourism supports Boracay, Bohol and much of Cebu, and remittances matter everywhere.

Daily rhythm follows the heat and the boats: early markets, midday rest, evening walks along the waterfronts, and basketball on every village court. Congestion in Metro Cebu, sugar prices, typhoon recovery and the pressure of tourism on small islands are recurring concerns.

Lechon, whole roast pig, is the centrepiece of Cebu's feasts as it is across the country, and puso, rice boiled in pouches of woven palm leaves, comes with grilled meat and fish. Cebu also makes dried mangoes and otap, flaky oval puff-pastry biscuits.

Iloilo's La Paz batchoy is a noodle soup of pork, offal and broth topped with crushed chicharon; pancit molo is a dumpling soup; and KBL is a sour stew of pigeon peas, pork and unripe jackfruit. Bacolod's chicken inasal is marinated in calamansi, pepper, vinegar and annatto and grilled over hot coals, and its piaya is a flat bread filled with muscovado sugar. Guimaras mangoes are prized nationwide.

Bohol makes calamay, a sticky coconut-and-sugar sweet sold in coconut shells; silvanas are frozen wafers of cashew meringue and buttercream; and Leyte and Samar produce binagol, a taro pudding steamed in a coconut shell, and moron, a rice cake swirled with chocolate. Tuba, coconut wine, is the village drink, and Negros sugar sweetens almost everything.

In Cebu, the city's Magellan's Cross, Basilica of the Santo Niño and Fort San Pedro sit together in the old centre. The island's south has Moalboal's sardine run and the Kawasan Falls, the north Malapascua's thresher sharks and Bantayan's beaches, and at Oslob whale sharks draw crowds of snorkellers. Bohol offers the Chocolate Hills around Carmen, tarsiers, river cruises at Loboc, old churches such as Baclayon, and Panglao's beaches and reefs.

Panay has Boracay's White Beach and Puka Beach off its northern tip, and Iloilo's heritage streets, the Jaro and Molo churches and the Miagao Church, a UNESCO World Heritage Site; Guimaras is a short boat ride away. On Negros, Bacolod has the mansion ruins of The Ruins in Talisay and nearby Silay's ancestral houses, while the south has Sipalay's beaches. Dumaguete is the base for Apo Island's marine sanctuary and the Balinsasayao Twin Lakes, and Siquijor has the Cambugahay Falls, Lazi's church and convent and a giant balete tree.

In the east, the Leyte-Samar coast takes in Tacloban, the MacArthur Landing Memorial at Palo and the San Juanico Bridge, Kalanggaman Island's sandbar, reported whale-shark sightings in Southern Leyte's Sogod Bay, the caves of Sohoton in Samar, and surf at Calicoan near Guiuan.