Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral: rebuilt seven times since 1565, and almost destroyed again by Allied bombing in 1944

On P. Burgos Street, in Cebu City, in the Philippines, the metropolitan cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is the seat of the Archdiocese of Cebu, distinct from the nearby Basilica del Santo Niño, a separate building located about two blocks to the south. A first church, dedicated to St. Vitalis, was built in April 1565 by Miguel López de Legazpi, fray Andrés de Urdaneta and fray Diego de Herrera, among the first churches of the Philippines. According to local historiographical tradition, not fully confirmed by independent sources in the details of the individual architects, the building was rebuilt seven times over more than two centuries, amid funding difficulties, a typhoon that destroyed an unfinished version of it in 1689, and funds diverted to military campaigns. The seventh and final reconstruction was begun on 7 December 1891 by Bishop Martín García Alcocer and completed in 1909 under Bishop Juan Bautista Gorordo, the first Filipino bishop of Cebu. Between 1933 and 1940 a major renovation was directed by the Chinese-Cebuano engineer Gavino Unchuan, to a design by the architects Eulogio Tablante Jr., Felino C.T. Lepon and Julio Ancheta. On 12 September 1944 Allied air raids during the Second World War badly damaged the recently renovated cathedral and destroyed the nearby episcopal palace, with the loss of centuries of archdiocesan archives: only the bell tower, built in 1835, the facade and the perimeter walls survived. The reconstruction, begun in 1945 by Archbishop Gabriel Reyes under the direction of the architect José Ma. Zaragosa, was completed in 1959 under Archbishop Julio Rosales. The Diocese of Cebu was erected on 14 August 1595 by Pope Clement VIII, together with the dioceses of Nueva Cáceres and Nueva Segovia, as suffragan to the newly created Archdiocese of Manila, under the first bishop Pedro de Agurto. Contrary to a widespread but unfounded claim, it is not the oldest diocese in Asia, since the diocese of Manila itself precedes it by sixteen years, and several dioceses of the Portuguese patronage in India, such as Goa, date back as far as the sixteenth century. On 28 April 1934 Pope Pius XI elevated it to a metropolitan archdiocese; today it is described as the largest archdiocese in the Philippines by number of faithful. From 24 to 31 January 2016 Cebu hosted the fifty-first International Eucharistic Congress, with the cathedral as the archdiocesan venue for the events and Cardinal Charles Bo, of Myanmar, as the legate of Pope Francis at the opening Mass, before more than ten thousand international pilgrims. On 23 November 2016 the National Historical Commission of the Philippines unveiled a second-level historical marker at the cathedral, and in March 2023 the National Museum of the Philippines declared it an important cultural property.