Discover. Experience. Enjoy STA. BARBARA, ILOILO

Here's the complete schedule of the 116th Commemoration of the Cry of Santa Barbara and 14th Kahilwayan Festival Celebrations which will take place from Nov. 8 - 17, 2014. Just click on the photo to enlarge. Schedule may change without prior notice. For more info and details, please call the Municipal Tourism Office - 033 523-9955.

The Santa Barbara Centennial Museum was built in 1998 as part of the Centennial Freedom Trail Site Project of the Philippine Centennial Commission. The museum houses antiques, artifacts and photos that tell the story of Santa Barbara’s historical heritage. The museum has two wings: the left wing is the historical wing while the right wing has been designated as the changing museum. In the historical wing is Gen. Martin Teofilo Delgado’s Exhibit. The items on exhibit here are: Gen. Martin Teofilo Delgado’s Exhibit – the greatest revolutionary hero of the Visayas, and the first Filipino Governor of Iloilo under the American regime. 1. GMTD’s bed 2. GMTD’s backbone – spared by the Delgado clan for display to the museum with document of permission 3. Documents written in Spanish attesting of him as the first Filipino Governor of Iloilo 4. Photos of him with his family 5. Frames explaining the Cry of Santa Barbara and his biography 6. Revolutionary insignia o...

To mark the 35th year of the CCP’s Outreach Program, a series of regional cultural exchanges and community tours billed as “Sining ay Buhay, Buhay ang Sining” will be organized by the CCP Cultural Exchange Department from September to November 2014 featuring the most prominent regional cultural groups. The exchanges will focus on the flourishing of arts and culture in the regions, and how art has made an impact in the lives of the people and the creative industry in the local communities.  Through this program, the CCP CED endeavors to support and motivate local cultural performing groups to achieve artistic excellence and promote local art and cultural expressions in various venues and communities.  The program will certainly be a fitting celebration of the center’s regional cultural work in the last three and a half decades.  To launch the exchanges,  three exceptional performing groups from Luzon will visit the Visayas region this September: Barasoain K...

Located at Brgy. Inangayan, Sta. Barbara, Iloilo, the township project of Global Estate Resorts Inc , a sister company of Megaworld Corp . called Sta. Barbara Heights is set to bring subdivision living into new "heights".   Accessible through the Oton-San Miguel-Sta. Barbara Provincial Road, it is situated on an elevated open parcel of rolling terrain closest to Iloilo City. Soon it will have access to the bypass road, the gateway to the airport. Dubbed to be another Central Business District of Iloilo, future developments include mixed density residential areas, a town center which will have commercial spaces, an IT Park comprised of BPO offices, recreation facilities, a health care center and academic institutions. It will also become a transportation hub as it is located between the Iloilo International Airport and Iloilo City. Amenities include a multi-purpose clubhouse, a 260 square-meter swimming pool, tennis and basketball courts, a lagoon whi...

Santa Barbara is getting convenient and getting more investors to say the least. Latest establishments to open and will soon open are ones that we one find in the big city before. But now, Santa Barbara is getting a big slice of the economic boom Iloilo is going through.  Bangga Dama is a prime prime spot and a few years from now, economic activity might shift to this area. Very soon, 7 Eleven and Andok's Litson Manok will open their respective branches in the area giving the area a big boost when it comes to recognized commercial establishments. Goldilocks (products) on the other hand are being resold at a local cakehouse near Bangga Osting. These new players join the ranks of recognizable brands that has made a toushdown in Santa Barbara including Mercury Drugstore, LBC, PNB (Philippiune National Bank), BPI (Bank of the Philippine Islands) with its 3 ATMs located across town and Super K Drugstore.  But the biggest of them all is the  PhP 43billion mixed use...

TOURISTS visiting the historic town of Santa Barbara, Iloilo will now have a handy travel guide of places to go to and things to try. Philippine telecommunications leader Smart Communications, Inc. and new media startup InnoPub Media will launch the Anvil Award-winning digital tourism program in town this coming Independence Day, June 12. Special markers containing QR (quick response) codes and NFC (near field communication) have been placed in select heritage and tourism areas in Santa Barbara. When scanned with a phone or tablet, the QR codes trigger the download of information about the tourism site. With NFC capable devices, all it takes is a tap on these markers to be able to get the information on their devices. To be able to download information, however, the gadget needs to be connected to the Internet and have a QR code scanner, which can be downloaded for free in the phone’s application market. The digital tourism program also includes a mobile guide to Santa ...

 Located just beside the church is one of the best preserved convents in Iloilo. Inside it has various shrines and gardens as well as a cemetery and a portion called "Avenue of Saints" lined with almost 20 statues of different .saints.  A visit at the second floor where the current priest and his helps reside can be specially arranged for big groups with the Municipal Tourism office at the Museum. There various collections can be seen as well as the "dungeon".  This structure along with the church is up for restoration by the National Historical Institute and is being planned to be converted into a museum, among others.  These stairs led to the second floor and is rumoured to have an entrance to a tunnel that goes al lthe way to the Tigum River a kilometer away.

WUTHLE Inc. is a project which turns bobbin lace-making and embroidery into a livelihood for women ex Hansenites (ex-lepers) and their skillful relatives. It stands for Women United Through Handcrafted Lace and Embroidery. It all started with a birthday gift, in 1985 to a Belgian ICM Missionary Sister, Madeleine Dieryck, who was working for and among Hansenites at the Western Visayas Sanitarium in Sta. Barbara, Iloilo. In gratitude, two young girls, both daughters of patients, gave her a self made, beautifully embroidered handkerchief.  Seeing the possibilities here, Sr. Madeleine requested them to embroider some more as tokens of gratitude to benefactors. These works were so much appreciated that orders came in. These two girls taught other women ex Hansenites as well as their relatives. And so the project grew.  In 1991, the attention of Sr. Madeleine went to many women, who, because of some deformities on their hands, could not hold a needle. While ...