Everything you need to know about the Philippines
Explore the Philippines from Luzon’s mountain terraces and Manila’s old walls to the islands of the Visayas, Palawan’s limestone coast and Mindanao’s highlands. Learn its regions, cities and waters, find sixteen sights, and discover the histories and daily life behind them. Practise Tagalog; Filipino, based principally on Tagalog, and English are official languages, alongside many regional speech traditions.
Read it, then make it stick
Geography of the Philippines
An archipelago in the western Pacific, organised into three broad island groups and eighteen administrative regions.
Know the shape of the country
Start with eighteen regions, including the restored Negros Island Region and Sulu in Zamboanga Peninsula, then place twenty-four cities and find the Cagayan River, two lakes, Manila Bay and four seas. Zoom in for Metro Manila and smaller islands. Region boundaries: James Faeldon, MIT licence, PSGC/NAMRIA-derived 2023 geometry updated for the 2024 Negros and 2025 Sulu changes. Rivers, lakes and neighbouring land: Natural Earth, public domain. City coordinates are curated. These are generalised learning maps; sea targets identify selected waters, not maritime claims.
Places worth visiting
Essential · Fortress
Fort Santiago
The Spanish-era fortress stands within Manila’s historic walled district. José Rizal was imprisoned here before his execution in 1896; its surviving and restored structures connect colonial history with the city’s wartime destruction.
Find sixteen places across Luzon, the Visayas, Palawan and Mindanao: Manila’s old walls, Ifugao rice terraces, colonial churches, volcanic landscapes and island waters. Pins mark individual landmarks or representative points in larger landscapes, including the offshore Tubbataha reefs. For volcanoes and protected areas, check current local access and PHIVOLCS guidance before planning a visit. Essential is our shortlist for a first trip, and worth a detour goes further. Select a pin to read about a place, then play the map and find them all.
Take Tagalog with you
Greetings and politeness
Hello, please, thank you, sorry: the ten openers everything else builds on.
Keep going one country deeper
When you have had your fill of the Philippines, the countries marked guide have a page like this one, and every other has maps of its own.
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