Kota Park Watchtower

Kota Park takes its name from the Bisaya word for a fortified watchtower — the structure here was built to spot Moro raiders approaching Bantayan Island’s coast, part of a chain of coastal watch posts the Spanish colonial administration set up across the northern Visayas through the 18th and 19th centuries. Local tradition pushes the first fortification earlier, crediting a certain Lázaro Mangubat with an original coral-stone kota built around 1630, mortared the way colonial-era masons worked before cement: coral stone, sand, and a lime binder set with egg white and sugar.

The tower’s use has shifted more than once since. After the raids stopped, the grounds served for a stretch as the local cemetery before Madridejos rehabilitated the site into a public park starting in the 1950s — the watchtower that once scanned for pirate sails now anchors a picnic ground and a walkway out to a lookout platform over the water.

• The lookout tower at the end of the connecting walkway gives the clearest view back toward the mainland.
• Come late afternoon for the sunset and a cooler park-going crowd rather than midday heat.
• The site’s layered history — fort, cemetery, park — is worth asking a local caretaker about; the signage doesn’t cover all of it.

Explore More in North Cebu Mainland

• Medellin Bamboo Forest
• Esoy Spring Falls
• Bagatayam Falls