San Pedro Cathedral

San Pedro Cathedral is the heart of Catholic Davao, a significant colonial-era church standing in the downtown district near the waterfront. The current building dates from the post-war reconstruction period and has been modified and expanded several times, but the site itself has been sacred to the city since the mid-19th century.

The cathedral serves as the seat of the Archdiocese of Davao and is a functioning parish as well as a landmark. It is worth visiting for the architecture, the sense of history, and the chance to see one of the few colonial-era institutions that survived Davao's rapid transformation into a modern city. The plaza in front is used for festivals and public gatherings.

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San Pedro Cathedral was built on the site where Spanish missionaries first established a settlement in 1847, marking the beginning of the colonial-era town of Davao. The current structure is the third to stand on the spot — the first two were destroyed, once by fire and once during the Second World War, when Davao was occupied by Japanese forces from 1942 to 1945.

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