When people mention Pampanga, you often think of food, particularly dainty sweets and saucy, oily dishes most Filipinos love. Or you think of those giant multicolor Christmas lanterns.

Pampanga culture is much more complex than that. Strategically located at the crossroads of the Central Plain of Luzon, the province has been a filter for the currents of sociocultural activities as well as a witness to the movement of history from north to south.

In the capital San Fernando City, for instance, the famous Paskuhan Village, now called Hilaga, has gone beyond being a Christmas-themed park. It now has a Collector’s Museum, which opened in June. The ongoing exhibit, curated by Jorge Cuyugan, ranges from minerals and fossils and rocks to old banknotes, ancient coins, vintage soda bottles, stamps, documents, holograms, watches, toys, vinyl records, historical magazine covers and newspaper front pages.

Viewers would likely be astonished by the unusual tastes and proclivities of some of these collectors. Probably this would be the first time they’d see stamps of porcelain, cork, cloth, or leather with meteorite dust or embedded with Swarovski crystal.

There, too, are coronation stamps, lenticular stamps, glow-in-the-dark stamps. Most astounding is a stamp with a CD-ROM, from the Bhutan monarchy. Those who love anything quirky in life shouldn’t miss this exhibit, which runs through January.

Icons and sacred vessels

The Archdiocesan Museum and Archives on the campus of University of the Assumption has its share of quirkiness, most outstanding of which is the life-size hardwood figure of the Crucified Christ in an extraordinary pose the pious might consider ugly and vulgar.

Most of those displayed are familiar to Catholics, though. Still, one can’t help but be awestruck when face to face with those gold chalices and monstrance. Or the silver tabernacle from Guagua. Or the solid-ivory image of Virgen de la Correa. Or a roomful of sacred vessels in blinding brilliance.

Curated by Msgr. Eugene Reyes, the museum has some 25,000 items, only a fraction of which is displayed in sections. The bulk of the collection is on an upper floor of the building, closed to the public, waiting for cleaning, labeling and inventory.

These are church artifacts recovered from Pampanga’s old churches or donated by their parish priests, ranging from small commemorative coins, ancient bells, gold-threaded vestments, to life-size icons, baptismal fonts and whole altarpieces. Many of these had been abandoned in churchyards when parishes acquired new properties.

The archives has a state-of the-art digitalization process that records for posterity canonical and historical books and documents, such as an old text of the pasyon in Kapampangan; and the country’s oldest matrimonial book (1642) and baptismal book (1620) in existence, recovered from Bacolor.

A nun and a priest mend tattered texts, looking for silverfish and bookworms in each, exposing them to chemicals, then repair each page before digitalizing and keeping them in the stockroom.

Heritage sites and structures

Being at the center of Luzon has naturally made Pampanga a crucible of cultures, evident in its Chinese-Hispanic cuisine, exquisite arts and crafts, rich literature and theater tradition, religious practices and heritage architecture.

San Fernando’s Heritage District comprises most of these historical and cultural sites and structures: the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Capitol, the City Hall, the Train Station, Pasudeco Sugar Central, Pampanga Hotel, the Presidio, the Archdiocesan Chancery, the Tabacalera, Baluyut Bridge, and those ancestral houses along Consunji Street through Sto. Niño Viejo Road.

Among the most prominent of the heritage houses are the Lazatin House, the Henson-Hizon House, the Hizon-Singian House, the Dayrit-Galang Residence, the Consunji Residence, the Cuyugan House. These are either Spanish Colonial or Art Deco.

Atypical in its exteriors is the Augusto P. Hizon House. It is the only one in the vicinity that looks Victorian, the imposing structure crowned by two domelike cupolas flanking its pediment. It is wrapped by a curving gray-and-white verandah with balusters and yellow-red-black Machuca tiles.

It is Early American Period style, the house being built at the turn of the 20th century. The interiors, however, is typical bahay-na-bato, with flooring of hardwood planks, a banggera, furniture of eclectic period styles, an escritorio (roll-top desk). The walls of the living room is adorned with vintage portraits framed in Tropical Art Nouveau.

Monumental relic

Many of these structures have been declared Heritage Sites by either the National Hispanic Institute or the city government. Some of them not yet but soon will be—such as that Gabaldon building now serving as general library of the city’s elementary school, one of those streamlined, solid-looking schoolhouses constructed all over the country during the American civil administration.

Or Everybody’s Café on MacArthur Highway, the home of authentic Kapampangan cuisine which opened after the war. The iconic structure was built only in the 1960s but it has a distinctive style—sprawling, airy, yet solid-looking, positively International Moderne.

Even Atching Lillian Borromeo’s Kusinang Matua (Old Kitchen) in neighboring Mexico town should be declared a heritage or historical site—if not for its ancestral look and rustic quaintness, then for having been graced by the visits of prominent figures and celebrities.

In the neighboring town of Bacolor is a wonder of a monumental relic, the Church of San Guillermo Ermitaño (St. William the Hermit). This has been a parish for over four centuries, the first church built in 1576 and the present one in 1764.

But it is now only half-a-church. A six-year accumulation of lahar volume from the 1991 Pinatubo eruption had turned it into what we see now, the famous Sunken Church of Bacolor.

Running alongside the half-buried structure is the parish archives and museum, labeled Recuerdos Sagrados de Bacolor, which displays icons, paintings, documents, artifacts salvaged from lahar destruction. Curator Cecilia Mariano says their peak season is from September to April, when they are kept busy by educational tours.

Athens of Pampanga

Bacolor used to be called the Athens of Pampanga as it was the province’s seat of culture and its capital for two centuries. It also was the country’s capital for two years during the Spanish colonial period when Manila was occupied by the British.

In 1995, the lahar flow reached 6 meters deep, almost covering the whole town and burying half of the church’s original height of 12 meters, so that the arch of its dome can now be touched by a parishioner.

“We were hopeless, we were despairing, we thought we couldn’t recover,” says Mariano. “It took them three years just to dig up the three retablos [altarpieces].”

The second-floor windows have been converted into doorways, and the Adoration Chapel into the archives-museum. What used to be part of a spacious altar area under the dome is now dead space inhabited by bats.

Laid out by the main entrance is the town’s famous statue of the Santo Entierro, or the Holy Burial of the Merciful Lord.
“Binibihisan ’yan every Friday,” says Mariano, casting a loving glance at the statuary.

It is an adored figure the faithful regularly dress up and bedeck with flowers, believing it bestows mercy beyond the grave. During the Holy Week, it is borne on a brightly lit carroza as the centerpiece of one of the grandest processions in the Great Plains of Luzon.