Where to Stay in Antipolo, Calabarzon

What is Antipolo known for?

Antipolo sits on high ground about two hundred metres above sea level, which is what makes it a break from Manila rather than an extension of it, and the view back over the metropolis is the reason people climb up. Rizal governs from here. The City of Antipolo is the capital of the province and the largest city Calabarzon has, which puts provincial business and highland air in the same place.

What are the main landmarks in Antipolo?

Art first, up on the plateau. The Pintô Art Museum and the Casa Santa Museum head the collections on Antipolo's list, and the Angono Petroglyphs are the oldest thing anywhere near the city. The neighbours crowd in.

Marikina and Pasig add the Marikina Shoe Museum, the Pasig City Museum and the Santo Rosario de Pasig Church within easy reach, and the Ynares Center takes the events that no museum could hold.

What is the history of Antipolo?

Rock carvings came long before the town. The Angono Petroglyphs are the oldest entry on the record for this part of Rizal, and every other name on the list, church or museum or arena, arrived centuries after the carvings did. The town's own date is 1650.

Antipolo has carried that founding year since, and the churches on the local list, Santo Tomas de Villanueva Church among them, belong to the long stretch that followed it. War left its own marker. The Pasig World War II Memorial Monument records that period for the cities below the plateau, and it is the one entry on the list tied to a single stretch of years rather than to a building's use.

Then the province moved in. Antipolo became the capital of Rizal and a component city of Calabarzon, which turned a highland town into the administrative centre of a province in the Philippines. Building followed the road up.

The PhilSports Complex, the PhilSports Arena and the Marikina Sports Complex all belong to the modern layer around Antipolo, and the Ynares Center serves the same purpose for the province itself. Museums came last. The Pintô Art Museum, the Casa Santa Museum, the Marikina Shoe Museum and the Pasig City Museum together make the collections a visitor works through, and they sit at the top of a record the Angono Petroglyphs opened.

Where is Antipolo?

Three hundred and six square kilometres of highland. The City of Antipolo covers that spread on ground about two hundred metres above sea level, which is what separates it from the plain the metropolis occupies and gives the plateau its outlook. Rizal wraps around it.

The province and the wider Calabarzon region carry the same tropical band, so height rather than season is what makes Antipolo feel different from the cities beneath it.

What is the climate of Antipolo?

Elevation sets the terms in Antipolo. Two hundred metres of height take the edge off what the tropical band delivers, and that difference is the whole reason Antipolo reads as a respite from the metropolis rather than as more of the same. Rain still rules the year.

Calabarzon divides its months by water rather than by temperature, so the plateau stays warm throughout and a visitor plans around cloud and downpour instead of around a cold spell.

How do you get to Antipolo?

The approach is a climb. Antipolo sits above the plain, so arriving from Marikina, Pasig or anywhere else in the metropolis means gaining the two hundred metres that separate the plateau from the cities below it. Rizal roads feed the capital.

Provincial traffic converges on the City of Antipolo because the province is run from here, and events at the Ynares Center put their own load on the same routes.