The Philippine Heritage Map launched

The Philippine Heritage Map has been launched, the country's first online information and management portal made to create an authoritative and comprehensive inventory of all heritage structures and historic events in the Philippines.

It aims to help promote and protect the unique cultural heritage though a showcase of significant Philippine architecture, historic districts, towns and cities.

The Philippine Heritage Map (also known as the Philippine Inventory of Cultural Properties and Historic Events) is a crowd-sourced repository that is maintained by the local stakeholders, government units, heritage practitioners and volunteers, all working towards preservation of Philippine cultural heritage through proper research, documentation and capacity building. Through a collaborative, grassroots-based framework and approach applied on heritage resource management, the coordinators envision on empowerment in relation to preserving Filipino cultural heritage and history.

Using the Philippine Heritage Map, we can:

Fully identify cultural properties and historic events using ISO standards and best practices adopted by the international heritage community to ensure data longevity and facilitate data exchange

Research and analyze important cultural data to find meaningful connections between heritage resources and establish their statements of significance

Plan for heritage management activities

Monitoring and risk mapping of identified cultural properties for more efficient investigation, intervention and conservation management

Raise awareness, promote understanding and encourage action among the local stakeholders, decision makers and the general public

The coolest feature of the Philippine Heritage Map is the map itself! Browse through the collection of markers scattered around the map, and thousands more are coming in the next few months. Check out our Santa Ana Heritage Zone feature, as well as the historic city of Tayabas and the Art Deco town of Sariaya.

The Philippine Heritage Map is powered by Arches, an innovative and powerful web platform that incorporates international standards for building an inventory of immovable cultural heritage, historic events and other significant cultural resources. The development of Arches was led by the Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Fund.

The Philippine Heritage Map is backed by Grupo Kalinangan, a social enterprise composed of passionate and motivated cultural heritage practitioners working to assist in identifying heritage resources around the Philippines for purposes of education, capacity building, cultural tourism and heritage conservation.

Image: Photo: Spanish ancestral stone house, by Andrew Russel