Today, history lives in Ilocos Sur. In Vigan, the famed Villa Fernandina founded in1574 by Juan de Salcedo, grandson of the Adelantado Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, the hand of history is everywhere, in the imposing monuments and statues standing as permanent tributes to the memory of illustrious dead, on the markers of stone and the memorial tablets upon the hollowed grounds where long ago a martyr was born, where a famous poetess lived, where a President taught as a humble barrio teacher. These markers and inscriptions are veritable readings a history, citing here and there “a chapel of wood and thatch erected on this site, 1574,” “an earthquake in 1619’,” “a fire in 1739”, recording the seizure by revolutionists under Col. Juan Villamor, and the detention by American forces as a political leader, Mena Crisologo 1899.