Half a million Filipinos spent their Christmas Eve and welcomed Christmas Day at the Rizal Park in Manila, the agency tasked to oversee national parks in the country said Saturday. National Parks Development Committee (NPDC) executive director Juliet Villegas said the number of the park’s visitors on Friday grew five times this year to 500,000 people due to major events and new features installed in the park this month.
“The big number of people who visited Rizal Park this Christmas Eve has been expected and anticipated by our office. While it has been the tradition of [many] Filipino families to spend Christmas in Rizal Park, others just opt to stroll around before heading home in time for Noche Buena," she said in a statement Saturday. The NPDC is an agency under the Department of Tourism (DOT) mandated to develop and maintain Rizal Park and five other parks in the country.
A BIT OF LUNETA HISTORY When the old Spanish walled city of Intramuros began to get crowded in the late 16th century, the Manila natives had to move out, and created the village of Bagumbayan some distance away. Later, Bagumbayan was itself fortified to help defend Intramuros, and assumed its other name Luneta ("crescent-shaped fortification"). It became a popular promenade for afternoon walks as the cool sea breeze blew in from nearby Manila Bay. Towards the end of the Spanish era, Luneta became more famous as a place of execution. The most prominent were those of Fathers Gomez, Burgos and Zamora on February 17, 1872, and that that of Jose Rizal on December 30, 1896. Today, Luneta is called Rizal Park, with a monument prominently standing near the spot where the national hero was shot by a Spanish firing squad. Source: Philippine Almanac Villegas attributed the huge number of visitors this year to the reopening of the Rizal Park Musical Dancing Fountain for public viewing last December 16, as well as the holding of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF)’s float parade on Friday. (See:
PEP: 36th MMFF Parade of the Stars is a big success) NPDC media information chief Kenneth Montegrande said the Rizal Park is set to undergo a “total renovation" in 2011. He said the Philippine Relief Map—the sprawling map of the archipelago found at the eastern side of the park—and the park’s Japanese and Chinese gardens, will be renovated by January. The Rizal Park, traditionally called Luneta (“half-moon" or crescent-shaped), is a 48-hectare park in Manila’s heartland to the south of the Old Walled City or Intramuros. It is named after Philippine national hero Jose Rizal, who was executed by firing squad in the area on December 30, 1896. The Rizal monument is the park’s most prominent landmark.
—ACC/JV, GMANews.TV 
GMA Brandtalk
Tracking
Archives
