Cebu City is the second largest city in the Philippines and the main hub of the Visayas region. It is one of the oldest Spanish colonial cities in the country — founded in 1565 by Miguel López de Legazpi, six years before Manila — and Colon Street in the old centre is reputedly the oldest street in the Philippines.
The major historical sites are clustered in the old city. Fort San Pedro (1738), the oldest triangular bastion fort in the Philippines, stands at the waterfront. Magellan's Cross — planted by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 upon his arrival — is housed in a chapel on Osmeña Boulevard next to the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño, which contains the oldest Christian relic in the country. The Yap-Sandiego Ancestral House is an intact 17th-century Mestizo house open to visitors.
Mactan Island, connected to Cebu by two bridges, is where Magellan was killed in 1521 and where the international airport is located. From Cebu City, ferries run to Bohol (the Chocolate Hills, Loboc River, tarsiers) and to Leyte, Negros, and other Visayan islands. The city is a major diving hub; the waters around the island have good coral and the area south of Cebu at Moalboal is known for whale sharks and sardine runs.