Malacañang Palace

• 1. Introduction

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  Malacañang Palace sits along Jose Laurel Street in the San Miguel district of Manila, on a stretch of land that began as a summer escape from the stifling heat of a colonial city. For over two and a half centuries, this address has functioned as something more than a building. It has been a symbol of who holds power in the Philippines, and of what that power costs the people who live under it. The palace has changed hands from Spanish governors-general to American military commanders to Filipino presidents. It has survived earthquakes, typhoons, and one of the most destructive bombardments in the Pacific theater of the Second World War. In 1986, crowds stormed its gates. The world's press found thousands of pairs of shoes. What makes a place like this so durable? And what does it reveal about the country it governs?

• 2. A Summer House on the Pasig

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  Don Luis José de la Rocha Camiña built the original structure in 1750. He was a Spanish physician working in the galleon trade, and he constructed it as a summer house with his wife, Gregoria Tuason de Zaballa. The Rocha property was built of stone and described as a relatively modest country house, though members of the Rocha family later disputed this, insisting it had a ballroom. There was a bath house on the river, enclosed gardens, and a stone fence around the grounds. The house sat close enough to Intramuros and Binondo that visitors could arrive by boat, carriage, or horseback.

  The state purchased the property in 1825 following the death of Colonel José Miguel Formento, who had himself bought it from the Rocha family on the 16th of November 1802 for a sum of a thousand pesos. For decades after the purchase, governors-general used it as a seasonal retreat, escaping the congestion and heat of Intramuros. That changed in a single afternoon. An earthquake on the 3rd of June 1863 destroyed the Palacio del Gobernador in the walled city, and Malacañan became the permanent official seat of Spanish colonial rule. Rafaél de Echagüe y Bermingham, previously governor of Puerto Rico, became the first Spanish governor-general to take up residence. Finding the place too small for the demands of his office, he added a wooden two-story extension to the back, along with stables, carriage sheds, and a boat landing for river-borne visitors.

• 3. Earthquakes, Typhoons, and Iron Roofs

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  Between 1863 and the end of Spanish rule in 1898, the palace was battered repeatedly by natural forces. An 1869 earthquake required speedy repairs. Further earthquakes, typhoons, and a fire between 1875 and 1879 caused graver structural damage, prompting a round of reconstruction that replaced old roofing with galvanized iron to reduce structural load and added cornices for additional flair. By 1880, another earthquake struck, and porticos were added to the facade to shelter waiting carriages. In 1885, a flagpole was installed in front of the building. An additional 22,000 pesos were spent on renovation and reconstruction during this period.

  By the end of Spanish rule, Malacañang was a sprawling assembly of mostly wooden buildings with sliding capiz windows, patios, and azoteas. The cumulative patching over decades had left unstable floors and leaking roofs. Each repair introduced new materials and styles without resolving the deeper structural weaknesses. That pattern of incremental repair followed by grander reconstruction would define the palace for the next century, culminating in the wholesale rebuilding overseen by Imelda Marcos between 1978 and 1979.

• 4. American Governors and Filipino Presidents

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  General Wesley Merritt was the first American military governor to reside at the palace in 1898, after sovereignty over the islands was ceded to the United States following the Spanish-American War. William Howard Taft became the first civil governor to move in, in 1901. The American governors continued buying land and reclaiming portions of the Pasig River, adding left and right wings, raising the ground floor above the flood line, replacing wood with concrete, and installing intricate chandeliers.

  Emilio Aguinaldo, recognized as the first president of the revolutionary First Philippine Republic, never lived in the palace as president; he resided at his private home in Kawit, Cavite, now the Aguinaldo Shrine. After his capture in Palanan, Isabela in 1901, the Americans brought him to the palace briefly as a political prisoner. The State Dining Room is where Aguinaldo was held. Manuel L. Quezon, writing in his autobiography The Good Fight, described the moment he walked through the hall and saw Aguinaldo alone in that room: "Trembling with emotion, I slowly walked through the hall toward the room hoping against hope that I would find no one inside."

  Quezon became the first Filipino resident of the palace when the Commonwealth of the Philippines was established on the 15th of November 1935. He tackled the persistent flooding problem by reclaiming 15 feet of the Pasig River bank and building a concrete wall. He also converted the ground floor storage area into a social hall. The three large Czech chandeliers in the Reception Hall were bought in 1937 by Quezon; during the Second World War, palace staff carefully disassembled them prism by prism and hid them for safekeeping, reassembling them after the war.

• 5. War, Occupation, and Survival

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  Malacañang Palace is the only major government building in Manila to have survived the heavy artillery bombing of the Second World War. Only the southwest corner of the palace, which held the State Dining Room and its service area, was damaged by shelling. In 1942, the Japanese turned the palace into what the source describes as a gilded prison, using it as the official residence of Jose P. Laurel, the Japanese-installed president of the Second Philippine Republic. President Quezon, meanwhile, moved the seat of the Philippine government to Corregidor, where General Douglas MacArthur had his headquarters.

  The building's survival was not incidental. Its location in the upscale district of San Miguel, its stone and concrete construction, and the specific geography of the Pasig River all contributed. After the war, Malacañang stood as the centerpiece of a neighborhood that had been largely spared, while much of Manila lay in ruins. President Diosdado Macapagal later found the palace in dire need of repair and restoration when he moved in. His wife, Eva Macapagal, initiated a beautification project that cleared sidewalk vendors from the grounds and converted muddy areas into landscaped gardens.

• 6. The Marcos Reconstruction

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  Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda were the longest residents in the palace's history, living there from December 1965 to February 1986. By the 1970s, the Pasig River had developed a foul odor and become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. The palace itself had accumulated a century of patch repairs that left its floors unstable and its roofs leaking. Between 1978 and 1979, Imelda Marcos oversaw a near-total reconstruction under the supervision of architect Jorge Ramos.

  The facade on all four sides was moved forward. The presidential quarters were enlarged along J.P. Laurel Street, eliminating the small garden and private driveway. On the river side, the old azoteas, verandas, and pavilion were combined into the present enormous Ceremonial Hall. A new presidential bedroom was built on the remaining side, with a discotheque at roof level, complete with strobe lights, fog equipment, and a rooftop helipad. The old structure was gutted almost entirely, replaced with poured concrete, concrete slabs, steel girders, and trusses, all concealed under ornate hardwood floors and ceilings. The rebuilt palace was fully bulletproofed, cooled by central air-conditioning with filters, and equipped with an independent power supply. The refurbished palace was inaugurated on the 1st of May 1979, the Marcos family's silver wedding anniversary.

  On the 30th of January 1970, four days after Marcos's fifth State of the Nation Address, student activists had stormed Gate 4 of the palace with a captured fire truck, throwing stones and molotov cocktails before the Presidential Guards Battalion repelled them. Damage to property was later estimated at between 500,000 and one million pesos. Martial Law was declared in 1972, and the palace complex and its surrounding neighborhood were closed to the public.

• 7. After the Revolution

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  When Marcos was overthrown in the 1986 People Power Revolution, the palace was stormed by protesters who roamed the grounds. The international press documented what the Marcos family had left behind before fleeing to Hawaii: Imelda's famous collection of thousands of shoes, a sunken bathtub measuring 15 square feet with a mirrored ceiling, and an altar holding a 19th-century religious statuary of ivory with gold-embroidered robes. The main palace was converted into a museum and remained open to the public for three years.

  President Corazon Aquino chose to live at the nearby Arlegui Mansion rather than the main palace, a deliberate symbolic distance from her predecessor. Her successor, Fidel Ramos, did the same. Among the presidents of the present Fifth Republic, only Gloria Macapagal Arroyo actually lived in the main palace as both her office and residence, having also lived there as a child during her father Diosdado Macapagal's presidency. Presidents Benigno Aquino III, Rodrigo Duterte, and Bongbong Marcos have each chosen to reside at Bahay Pangulo, the guesthouse directly across the Pasig River from the palace, which was acquired on orders of President Quezon in 1936-1937. Bongbong Marcos has lived there since the 30th of June 2022.

  The Kalayaan Hall, built in 1921 by Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison and the oldest surviving structure of the complex after the 1978 reconstruction, now houses the Presidential Museum and Library. Established in 2004 through a merger of the Presidential Museum and the Malacañang Library, and renamed in 2010, the institution holds clothing, personal effects, gifts, publications, and artworks from the entire line of Philippine presidents, from Emilio Aguinaldo to the present.

• 8. Halls, Paintings, and the Weight of Objects

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  Juan Luna's painting The Blood Compact, painted in 1886, hangs at the top of the Grand Staircase in its original carved frame. It was given to the government in exchange for Luna's scholarship to study in Spain. Forty small paintings of famous Filipinos by Florentino Macabuhay, completed in 1940, hang in a mirrored passage leading to Heroes Hall. First Lady Eva Macapagal commissioned sculptor Guillermo Tolentino to create the busts of national heroes in that hall.

  The three large chandeliers in the Rizal Ceremonial Hall were carved in wood and glass in 1979 by Juan Flores of Betis, Pampanga. The State Dining Room holds two dominant paintings: a fiesta scene by National Artist Carlos Francisco, originally commissioned for the Manila Hotel and transferred to the palace in 1975, and an early rural scene by Fernando Amorsolo. The finest glassware in the palace collection includes Irish Waterford and French St. Gobain; the china includes Limoges and Meissen pieces brought out for special occasions.

  The portrait of President Fidel Ramos in the Reception Hall stands apart from all others. It is painted not on canvas but on a narra plank, with decorations signed into the wood, and it was a gift from Gaycer Masilang, a prisoner serving a life sentence. San Miguel Church, adjacent to the palace complex, was established by the Jesuits in 1603, became a parish church in 1611, ministered to Japanese Christian exiles fleeing the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1615, and was declared the National Shrine of Saint Michael, the Archangel in 1986.