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Bacolod is the capital of Negros Occidental and the largest city of the Negros Island Region, with 624,787 people in 2024, the second most populous city of the Visayas after Cebu City. It lies on level ground on the northwestern coast of Negros, facing the Guimaras Strait, with sugarcane fields along its highways.
A riverside village called Magsungay was placed under Saint Sebastian in the 18th century, and Bacolod became a town around 1755 after Moro raids drove its people inland. It became the capital of Negros in 1849, was briefly capital of the Cantonal Republic of Negros in 1898, and became a chartered city in 1938.
Known as the City of Smiles for its MassKara Festival each October, Bacolod is also famous for piaya and chicken inasal. Visitors walk from the cathedral and the public plaza to the provincial capitol and its lagoon, and see the sugar-era mansions of Burgos Street.
Bacolod San Sebastian Cathedral is the seat of the Diocese of Bacolod, a stone church begun on 27 April 1876 under the Recollect priest Mauricio Ferrero and built of coral stone from Guimaras with hardwood from Palawan. Consecrated in January 1882, it was declared a cathedral in 1933.
The Bacolod Public Plaza, officially the Plaza del 6 de Noviembre after the day Spanish forces surrendered Negros, lies in the heart of downtown across from the cathedral. A belt of trees, four round fountains and a bandstand of 1927 fill it, and it is the main stage of the MassKara Festival.
The Bacolod Fountain of Justice marks the site of the house of Jose Ruiz de Luzurriaga, where Spanish officials surrendered Bacolod to the forces of General Aniceto Lacson on 6 November 1898. The fountain and its plaza are lit at night and are a meeting place for rallies, protests and city events.
Yulo's Park in Bacolod is a historic house built in 1919 by Mariano Yulo, governor of Negros Occidental and later a senator, and a gathering place in the days before the public plaza. The first telephone call between Negros and Panay was made here in 1926, and visits are by appointment.
The Negros Occidental Provincial Capitol is the seat of the provincial government, a neoclassical building in the shape of the letter E finished in 1933, with Juan Arellano carrying out the design. Wide steps lead to tall Corinthian colonnades, and it became a National Historical Landmark in 2004.
The Capitol Park and Lagoon in front of the provincial capitol is a favourite place in Bacolod for jogging, dance practice and feeding the tilapia in the lagoon. At its two ends stand sculptures of a woman and of a man with water buffalo, the work of Francesco Riccardo Monti and Guillermo Tolentino.
The Negros Museum in the capitol complex shows the lifestyle and society of Negros rather than archaeological finds, with old furnishings lent by ancestral houses and changing art shows. Opened on 17 March 1996, it now fills the former Provincial Agriculture Building, built in 1925.
The Panaad Park and Sports Complex is a 25-hectare park in Bacolod shaded by some 60,000 eucalyptus trees, with a stadium, an Olympic-size pool and a softball field. It is the home of the Panaad Festival each April, with 32 pavilions for the towns and cities of Negros Occidental.
Daku Balay, the Big House, on Burgos Street is the home of the sugar planter Generoso Villanueva, built from 1933 to 1936 as the first Art Deco building in Bacolod. With curved balconies and porthole windows it was nicknamed the Boat House, and it was the tallest building in town until 1959.
The Mariano Ramos Ancestral House stands on Burgos Street, once called Millionaires' Row, built in the 1930s for one of the first municipal presidents of Bacolod in a mix of Castilian and Tuscan styles. In the Second World War the Japanese army seized it as a watchtower over the city.
The MassKara Festival fills Bacolod each October with street dancers in smiling masks, which gave the city its name, the City of Smiles. Begun in 1980, a hard year of low sugar prices and a ferry disaster, it is held at the public plaza, the Lacson Tourism Strip and the city government centre.
The Bacolod Baywalk is a privately owned seaside esplanade in the 124-hectare Reclamation Area of Bacolod, near the BREDCO Port on the Guimaras Strait, which forms the western edge of the city. It was first opened in 2013, and it was opened to the public once again in 2022.
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Western Visayas, Philippines
Calabarzon, Philippines
National Capital Region, Philippines
Davao Region, Philippines
Eastern Visayas, Philippines
Cordillera Administrative Region, Philippines
Calabarzon, Philippines
National Capital Region, Philippines
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