City prepares for summit to create Heritage Charter

CEBU, Philippines — Another summit is set to be organized by the Cebu City Government in 2022, and this time they would be focusing on heritage.

Vice Mayor Raymond Garcia, who heads the Cebu City Cultural and Historical Affairs Commission, said the heritage summit will be done on December 1 and 2 in a still undisclosed venue during the re-opening ceremony of the Casa Gorordo Museum by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Incorporated (RAFI).

With this, Garcia is inviting all stakeholders to take part in the summit.

The upcoming summit is expected to come up with a Heritage Charter that will serve as a guide in creating ordinances for the protection of the Cebuano heritage and culture.

“The Heritage Charter will be of use to us as our guide in making ordinances that will preserve our heritage, history, and culture. One of the things that we will come up with is an ordinance creating the heritage district of our old Cebu, and this (Casa Gorordo Museum) will be part of the old Cebu,” Garcia said.

He also discussed the city’s plan to transfer the City Hall to the South Road Properties (SRP) and utilize the current City Hall as a museum.

“I was telling the mayor - ‘mayor, when we declare and pass and approve the heritage district, City Hall will be part of the heritage district. And for me it should no longer be there because all business transactions should be outside the heritage district’,” Garcia said.

Mayor Michael Rama agreed to it since it has been his long-time dream to build a City Hall Complex at the SRP and a modern museum.

Meanwhile, Casa Gorordo, one of the go-to tourist spots in the city, has reopened after RAFI had closed the facility at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

RAFI also utilized the time to renovate the museum while it was closed to the public.

Opening hours for the said museum is from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Mondays to Saturdays.

A special guided tour can also be arranged for a minimum of five. The guided tour though has a different entry rate than the app-guided regular tours.

A coffee shop will also open soon around the museum.