Quiapo, Manila

Quiapo () is a district of the city of Manila, in the National Capital Region of the Philippines. Known as the “Old Downtown of Manila", the district’s most famous landmark is Quiapo Church, shrine of the sacred Black Nazarene image, processioned annually every January in the historic district, attracting tens of thousands of devotees.  

Geographically located at the very center of the City of Manila, Quiapo is bounded by the Pasig River and the Estero de San Miguel to the south, San Miguel district to the east, the districts of Sampaloc and Santa Cruz; with Recto Avenue to the north, and Rizal Avenue to the west.

Etymology
Quiapo's name is derived from the abundance of water cabbage (Pistia stratiotes), called kiyapo in Tagalog (spelled quiapo in "Philippine Spanish") in the nearby Pasig River. The town of Cuyapo in Nueva Ecija province is also named after the same plant.

 History 
Pre-1800 maps of Manila show that Quiapo, historically a poor fishing village, was originally a cluster of islands with marshlands and shallow waters. In 1578, Franciscans arrived and established their main missionary headquarters in the nearby Santa Ana de Sapa, taking Quiapo as part of its visita (chapel-of-ease) and founded Quiapo Church, dedicated to its patron Saint John the Baptist.

Franciscan prelate Pedro Bautista petitioned to make Quiapo a separate town, and the petition was granted by the Governor-General Santiago de Vera on August 29, 1586. In 1622, Augustinians arrived and founded a chapel in honor of St. Sebastian at the present-day site of the San Sebastian Basilica. By 1850, then a small agricultural village, population of Quiapo grew as a result of a developing economy upon termination of the Manila Galleon Trade monopoly and the subsequent opening of the Philippines to world trade in 1830. Newly affluent mestizo families began settling in Quiapo afterwards, as well as rich mercantile Europeans and Spanish military officials.

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 References

Category:Quiapo
Category:Settlements in Manila
Category:Districts of Manila