Museum hours: 8 a.m.-12 noon and 1 p.m.-5 p.m.

The very first museum put up by a local government unit in South Cebu is this facility in Carcar City.

It contains galleries featuring objects with historical, cultural and artistic relevance.

Among the artifacts displayed at the Carcar City Museum are a traditional corn milling stone, winning costumes used by Carcar contingents in numerous artistic performances and old news clippings about General Pantaleon “Leon Kilat” Villegas.

On the museum walls, visitors can see a chronology of events that took place in Carcar from the Pleistocene period up to the present.

Not only is the entrance free, there are attendants that will gladly lead visitors on a tour of the different galleries.

Carcar Dispensary

The building housing the museum was built in the 1900s and functioned back then as the Carcar Dispensary.

The profusion of latticework, semicircular transoms, carved barandillas and mini-canopies amid stained glass window panes sets it apart as an outstanding architectural landmark.

Construction of this structure, which is an excellent example of American-era civic architecture in the Philippines, was initiated by Mayor Mariano Mercado in 1929.

The dispensary was inaugurated by the mayor’s wife, Flora Base Mercado, in 1937 with Gov. Sotero Cabahug in attendance. It was immediately hailed a sign of the town’s progress.

Carcar landmarks

On July 8, 2008, during Carcar’s first anniversary as a city, the building was inaugurated as the Carcar City Museum.

Beside the museum is a small gated park that pays homage to Don Mariano Mercado, who was responsible for many of Carcar’s beautiful landmarks.

Among these are the pool behind the dispensary, Carcar Rotunda and the Rizal Monument.