Basilica del Santo Niño

In April 1565, a soldier of Legazpi's expedition found in the ashes of a burned Cebu settlement a wooden box, and inside it, untouched by the fire, a small Flemish image of the Christ Child, believed to be Magellan's gift to Queen Juana at her baptism in 1521. The Augustinians took it as a sign, and on April 28, 1565, Fray Andrés de Urdaneta founded on that very spot the first church in the Philippines. The present stone church, raised in 1735-1740, became a minor basilica in 1965, on the fourth centenary of that founding, and every January the Sinulog festival fills Cebu with millions dancing before the Santo Niño. From this small image grew the faith of an entire nation, and the oldest church in the Philippines still guards the place where it began.