About Simbahan
Simbahan is an independent documentation project dedicated to preserving and sharing the religious heritage of the Philippines.
The original Simbahan blog was launched on June 19, 2007 as a website devoted to my interest in Philippine religious heritage architecture. At the time, I had been documenting heritage churches across the country, a body of work that eventually led to my first major book project as one of the principal photographers for Philippine Church Facades.
Simbahan began with a simple realization: our historic churches and other religious structures are not permanent. They face constant threats from natural disasters, neglect, unsympathetic renovations, urban development, and the passage of time. Once they are altered or lost, a part of our cultural memory disappears with them.
I started documenting these places while they could still be seen, appreciated, and remembered. My early work focused largely on the Philippines’ built religious heritage, particularly churches and other ecclesiastical structures from the Spanish colonial period. These became the foundation of what would eventually grow into one of the country’s largest independent archives on Philippine religious heritage.
Over the years, my work extended beyond this website. Many of the coffee table books and heritage publications I have worked on have also focused on churches and religious architecture, reinforcing my belief that documentation is one way of preserving our shared heritage.
In 2022, after years of maintaining several websites, I decided to streamline my online presence and retired the original simbahan.net domain. The archive remained offline until April 2024, when I revived Simbahan as part of my main website at simbahan.stancabigas.com. The revival is more than a simple restoration of an old blog. It is an opportunity to review, update, expand, and preserve nearly two decades of documentation for a new generation of readers.
Today, Simbahan remains rooted in the documentation of the Philippines’ built religious heritage. Every article, photograph, and field observation contributes to a growing archive that I hope will remain valuable to travelers, students, researchers, heritage advocates, and anyone interested in understanding the country’s religious and cultural landscape.
Although Simbahan was founded to document religious architecture, I hope to gradually broaden its scope over time. Churches and other built heritage will always remain its foundation, but I also hope to explore the wider story of Philippine religious heritage through conservation, craftsmanship, traditions, and other subjects closely connected to these places. In time, I also hope to document religious architecture and sacred sites beyond the Roman Catholic tradition, reflecting the rich diversity of the Philippines’ religious and cultural heritage.
Simbahan is not a theological website, nor does it seek to promote any particular faith. Its purpose is to document and interpret religious heritage as an important part of Philippine history, architecture, art, and cultural identity.
The archive will continue to grow as I revisit older articles, publish new discoveries, and document more of the Philippines’ religious heritage. My hope is simple: that Simbahan inspires more people to appreciate, document, and help preserve these places so that future generations may continue to learn from the stories they tell.