Parish Church of San Antonio de Padua of Tuburan

Official Name: Parish Church of San Antonio de Padua of Tuburan[1]

Classification Status: Classified Historic Structures (covering all Colonial Churches and other Houses of Worship, per NHCP Res. No. 3, s. 1991)[1]

Town or City: Municipality of Tuburan, Cebu

Year Declared: 1850[1]

Description:
San Antonio de Padua Church is a neo-Romanesque, Roman Catholic church in Tuburan, a northwestern town in the province of Cebu. It is also called Tuburan Church.[2]

History
Tuburan, founded by Mariano Monteban who was from Sogod, was named based on the presence of its numerous springs. The town was established in 1851 and its parish on February 13, 1857, becoming the mother parish of Tabuelan. A church was built in 1937 but was destroyed during World War II. On January 31, 2007, Ricardo Cardinal Vidal declared it an archdiocesan shrine.[2]

Architecture
Two bell towers are foregrounded and flank the entrance San Antonio de Padua Church, creating a space for a courtyard instead of a portico that is most commonly found in other Spanish colonial churches in the country. Church’s entrance and the quadrangular bell towers are made of three levels defined by cornice moldings. In the ground level the bell towers have pointed arches whose tympanums are blind and contain a central ridge that is flanked by rectilinear windows. Their upper registers are quite unique, ornamented by window openings. From top to bottom centrally located a rose window, a blind arch window whose tympanum is pierced with a round window and a slit opening in its midsection and flanked by a set of three slit openings each on either side, and a pair of pointed arched windows with balustrade. The uppermost level likewise a central pointed arched opening flanked by a triad of slits. Pilasters terminate in pinnacles flanking a central dome roof.

The facade of the church contains similar pointed arch motif, its main doorway is flanked by paired engaged Corinthian columns giving rise to double decorative bands on architrave. The upper register has pilasters. They flanked a row of alternating blind and stained glass pointed arches and above it demarcated by a molding is the patron’s niche flanked by pilaster-decors. Its pediment has a rose window in the center.

The interiors of the church feature a vaulted ceiling and a colonnade of columns along the nave.[2]

Source:
1. https://ncca.gov.ph/philippine-registry-cultural-property-precup/
2. https://www.theoldchurches.com/philippines/cebu/tuburan/archdiocesan-shrine-of-san-antonio-de-padua-in-tuburan-cebu/