1730 Jesuit House

The Jesuit House sits in Parian, the old Chinese mestizo trading quarter of colonial Cebu, and its 1730 date makes it one of the oldest surviving houses in the country still standing on its original site. Jesuit missionaries built it before the order’s expulsion from Spanish territories in 1768; afterward it passed to Chinese mestizo merchant families who ran their trading business out of Parian for generations, which is why the ground floor still reads more like a warehouse than a home.

• The coral stone walls and hardwood posts date to the original construction — look for the tool marks and irregular block sizes that separate original fabric from later repair work.
• A small museum inside holds religious artifacts and antique furniture collected from the house and the wider Parian district.
• The lintel carries an inscribed date, one of the few in the city tied directly to a specific construction year rather than an estimate.

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